{20} For these reasons, these and others, we must cling to our great epic poet, Shelley's "third among the sons of light." He is not easy reading: the greatest seldom are: but as with all the greatest, each new reading is not only easier than the last but fuller of matter for thought, wonder and delight. At each new reading, too, the things in him that belonged to his own age, the Biblical literalism, the theological prepossessions, the political partisanship, recede more and more into the background and leave us freer to enjoy the things which belong to all time. And to all peoples. Milton is, indeed, intensely English and could not have been anything but an Englishman. His profound conviction of the greatness of moral issues, and his passionate love of liberty, have both been characteristic of the Englishmen of whom England is most proud. Till lately too, at any rate, we should have said that his fierce individualism, intellectual and political, was English too. But his mind and soul, stored with the gathered riches of many languages and of an inward experience far too intense to be confined by national limitations, reach out to a world wider altogether than this island, wider even than Europe. In _Samson Agonistes_ it is hard to say who is more vividly present, the English {21} politician, the Greek tragedian, or the Hebrew prophet. And in one sense _Paradise Lost_ is the most universal of all poems. Indeed, that word may be applied to it in its strictest meaning, for the field of Milton's action is not Greece, or Italy, or England, or even the whole earth; it is the universe itself. That is one of its difficulties: but it is also a source of the uplifting and enlarging quality which is peculiarly Miltonic. With him we are conscious of treading no petty scene. We have in some respects travelled far from Milton's way both of stating and of solving his problem, but nevertheless it is still with us to-day and always: the problem of man's origin and destiny, of the ways of God to men. And though Milton is more hampered by literal belief in a particular theological legend than the authors of the _Book of Job_ and the _Prometheus Vinctus_, yet, like these, he shows that a great mind and soul will leave the imprint of power and truth on the most incredible primitive story. To read his great poem, or indeed any of his poems, is to live for a while in the presence of one of those royal souls, those natural kings of men, whom Plato felt to be born to rule and inspire their fellows: and the heroic temper of the man is in England less rare than the consummate {22} perfection of art which has eternalized its utterance. This is Milton: and, though we may be too weak to read him often, we shall never be able to do without him, never think of him without an added strength and exaltation of spirit. {23} CHAPTER II MILTON'S LIFE AND CHARACTER