Nor do I name of men the common rout, That, wandering loose about, Grow up and perish as the summer fly, Heads without name, no more remember'd; so sings the Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_-- But such as thou hast solemnly elected, With gifts and graces eminently adorned, To some great work, thy glory, And people's safety, which in part they effect. Under one form or another Puritanism is to be found in almost all religions, and in many systems of philosophy. Milton's Puritanism enabled him to combine his classical and Biblical studies, to reconcile his pagan and Christian admirations, Stoicism, and the Quakers. It was with no sense of incongruity that he gave to the Christ a speech in praise of-- Quintus, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,... Who could do mighty things, and could contemn Riches, though offered from the hand of Kings. To reject common ambitions, to refuse common enticements, to rule passions, desires, and fears, "neither to change, nor falter, nor repent,"--this was the wisdom and this the virtue that he set before himself. There is no beatific vision to keep his eyes from wandering among the shows of earth. Milton's heaven is colder than his earth, the home of Titans, whose employ is political and martial. When his imagination deals with earthly realities, the noble melancholy of the Greeks lies upon it. His last word on human life might be translated into Greek with no straining and no loss of meaning-- His servants He, with new acquist Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent. He is therefore one of the few English poets (alone in this respect among the greatest) who have not sung of Love. His only English love-poem, the sonnet _To the Nightingale_, is his earliest and poorest sonnet. He elected in his later poems to sing of Marriage, its foundation in reason, its utility, its respectability and antiquity as an institution, and, above all, its amazing dangers. He has thus lost the devotion of the young, who, while they read poetry by the ear and eye for its sonorous suggestions, and its processions of vague shapes, love Milton; but when they come to read it for its matter and sentiment, leave him--in most cases never to return. The atmosphere of his later poems is that of some great public institution. Heaven is an Oriental despotism. Hell is a Secession parliament. In the happy garden itself there is no privacy, no individualism; it is the focus of the action, the central point of the attack and the defence; and a great part of the conversation of its inhabitants turns on the regulations under which they live. They never forget that they are all mankind, and when their psalm goes up in grateful adoration to their Creator, it is like the unanimous voice of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues.