Milton’s masterpiece is, of course, _Paradise Lost_. Like Dante, he would show that the Christian creed could inspire an epic as effectively as pagan legends, and no doubt on that account he is, like Dante, less read today than if he had remained purely secular. There is, however, a further parallel which is often missed. Just as Dante rationalizes Purgatory and is not orthodox on many points, so Milton more or less rationalizes Satan and hell. His Prince of Darkness is by no means the horned devil of ordinary believers, and we know that he had, in fact, very liberal ideas. In any case, the poetry is as magnificent as the conception, from the artistic point of view, is grand. It certainly puts John Milton in the highest circle of the immortals. One ought to read some of his other great poems to correct the common idea that he was absorbed entirely in biblical stories, and I would recommend every one to read, of his superb prose work, at least the _Areopagitica_, an address to Parliament on the liberty of the press. Milton was far from medieval in his social ideals. As I have already said, we are here dealing with writers who are on the turn from the medieval to the modern age. It is difficult to draw the line, but for my purpose of giving just an idea of the position and character of each classic I may take the spread of Deism in Europe as the beginning of the modern period and carry this section as far as the poet Pope. One classic of Milton’s time that ought to be read is the _Hudibras_ of Samuel Butler (1612-80). Butler had the brilliant idea that the sour Puritan was the Don Quixote of English life and this poem is a delicious satire of the type. Royalty was by that time restored, and everybody was prepared to laugh at the men who had made England sober and dismal for a generation. The humor of _Hudibras_ is so rich that it is always worth reading. A very different classic of the age is John Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_, perhaps the most widely read religious book, apart from the Bible, that was ever written. Bunyan (1628-88) was a pious thinker, but a literary genius. His allegorical figures will never cease to be quoted. Izaak Walton’s _Compleat Angler_ is another work of the time that comes near being a classic, and Milton’s friend, Andrew Marvell, wrote some superb nature-poetry. More frequently quoted now are the Diaries of Pepys (1633-1703) and Evelyn (1620-1706). The former was a superior civil servant, and he most minutely and pleasantly records nine years of his life in London. Evelyn was a country gentleman and he reflects the life of his class. They are both valuable and interesting.