A passage in _The Reason of Church Government_, written at the same period, 1641, gives us the the fullest account of his hesitation. It was a hesitation caused, partly by the wealth of matter which his reading suggested to him, partly by the consciousness that he ought not to begin in haste while each year was ripening his powers. Every one who has undertaken a work of any length has made the experience, that the faculty of composition will not work with ease, until the reason is satisfied that the subject chosen is a congenial one. Gibbon has told us himself of the many periods of history upon which he tried his pen, even after the memorable 16 October, 1764, when he "sate musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter." We know how many sketches of possible tragedies Recine would make before he could adopt one as the appropriate theme, on which he could work with that thorough enjoyment of the labour, which is necessary to give life and verve to any creation, whether of the poet or the orator. The leaves of the Trinity College MS., which are contemporary with his confidence to the readers of his tract _Of Church Government_, exhibit a list of nearly one hundred subjects, which, had occurred to him from time to time as practicable subjects. From the mode of entry we see that, already in 1641, a scriptural was likely to have tie preference over a profane subject, and that among scriptural subjects _Paradise Lost_ (the familiar title appears in this early note), stands out prominently above the rest. The historical subjects are all taken from native history, none are foreign, and all are from the time before the Roman conquest. The scriptural subjects are partly from the Old, partly from the New, Testament. Some of these subjects are named and nothing more, while others are slightly sketched out. Among these latter--are _Baptistes_, on the death of John the Baptist, and _Christus Patiens_, apparently to be confined to the agony in the garden. Of _Paradise Lost_ there are four drafts in greater detail than any of the others. These drafts of the plot or action, though none of them that which was finally adopted, are sufficiently near to the action of the poem as it stands, to reveal to as the fact that the author's imaginative conception of what he intended to produce was generated, cast, and moulded, at a comparatively early age. The commonly received notion, therefore, with which authors, as they age, are wont to comfort themselves, that one of the greatest feats of original invention achieved by man, was begun after fifty, must be thus far modified. _Paradise Lost_ was _composed_ after fifty, but was _conceived_ at thirty-two. Hence the high degree of perfection realised in the total result. For there were combined to produce it the opposite virtues of two distinct periods of mental development; the daring imagination and fresh emotional play of early manhood, with