All poets, then, and lovers of poetry, all literary critics and students of language must honor in Milton the almost faultless artist, the supreme master of his craft. But there is a reason why, not alone the literary class, but all men of English stock should celebrate Milton's tercentenary. There have been poets whose technique was exquisite, but whose character was contemptible. John Milton was not simply a great poet, but a great man, a heroic soul; and his type was characteristically English, both in its virtues and its shortcomings. Of Shakspere, the man, we know next to nothing. But of Milton personally we know all that we need to know, more than is known of many a modern author. There is abundance of biography and autobiography. Milton had a noble self-esteem, and he was engaged for twenty years in hot controversies. Hence those passages of apologetics scattered through his prose works, from which the lives of their author have been largely compiled. Moreover he was a pamphleteer and journalist, as well as a poet, uttering himself freely on the questions of the day. We know his opinions on government, education, religion, marriage and divorce, the freedom of the press and many other subjects. We know what he thought of eminent contemporaries, Charles I., Cromwell, Vane, Desborough, Overton, Fairfax. It was not then the fashion to write critical essays, literary reviews and book notices. Yet, aside from his own practice, his writings are sown here and there with incidental judgments of books and authors, from which his literary principles may be gathered. He has spoken now and again of Shakspere and Ben Jonson, of Spenser, Chaucer, Euripides, Homer, the book of Job, the psalms of David, the Song of Solomon, the poems of Tasso and Ariosto, the Arthur and Charlemagne romances, of Bacon and Selden, the dramatic unities, blank verse _vs._ rhyme, and similar topics. In some aspects and relations, harsh and unlovely, egotistical and stubborn, the total impression of Milton's personality is singularly imposing. His virtues were manly virtues. Of the four cardinal moral virtues--the so-called Aristotelian virtues--temperance, justice, fortitude, prudence; which Dante symbolizes by the group of stars-- Non viste mai fuor ch' alla prima gente--