If you live in New York or visit there, you may see in the public library a painting of Milton as he sat in his home, dictating “Paradise Lost.” We have a description from the pen of a visitor; it was a poor little house, with only one room to the floor, and the poet sat in a chair, in a rusty black suit, old and blind, pale and tormented with rheumatism. Ten pounds he got for England’s great epic, and thirteen hundred copies of it were sold during his lifetime. Yet his spirit never wavered, and he lived to write “Samson Agonistes,” a drama in the Greek style, neglected by the critics. As a rule there is nothing more futile than imitations of outworn art forms; but once in a while it happens that a man lives the old life, and can write in the old manner. Milton writes a Greek drama about a Jewish strong man--and it turns out to be a picture of the poet’s own soul at bay! Having praised Milton highly in this chapter, I recall my opening statement as to the superiority of present-day technique. You will expect me to justify this, and an interesting opportunity presents itself here. In 1655 occurred a massacre of Swiss Protestants by Italian Catholics under the Duke of Savoy. Milton, being then in office as foreign secretary, wrote a sonnet voicing his indignation. It is rated by critics as one of the greatest of English sonnets. For your convenience I quote it: ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT Avenge, O Lord! thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones. Forget not: In Thy book record their groans Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll’d Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To Heaven. Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow O’er all the Italian field, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant, that from these may grow A hundred-fold, who, having learnt Thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe. Francis Turner Palgrave, named by Tennyson as the best judge of poetry of his time, says in the notes to his “Golden Treasury”: “this ‘collect in verse,’ as it has been justly called, is the most mighty Sonnet in any language known to the Editor.” So you see, we are setting a high standard. What modern work shall we compare with it?