Hazlitt insisted that Shakspere's principles were aristocratic, chiefly, I believe, because of his handling of the tribunes and the plebs in _Coriolanus_. Shakspere does treat his mobs with a kindly and amused contempt. They are fickle, ignorant, illogical, thick-headed, easily imposed upon. Still he makes you feel that they are composed of good fellows at bottom, quickly placated and disposed to do the fair thing. I think that Shakspere's is the more democratic nature; that his distrust of the people is much less radical than Milton's. Walt Whitman's obstreperous democracy, his all-embracing _camaraderie_, his liking for the warm, gregarious pressure of the crowd, was a spirit quite alien from his whose "soul was like a star and dwelt apart." Anything vulgar was outside or below the sympathies of this Puritan gentleman. Falstaff must have been merely disgusting to him; and fancy him reading Mark Twain! In Milton's references to popular pastimes there is always a mixture of disapproval, the air of the superior person. "The people on their holidays," says Samson, are "impetuous, insolent, unquenchable." "Methought," says the lady in _Comus_, "--it was the sound Of riot and ill managed merriment, Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe Stirs up among the loose, unlettered hinds When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan And thank the gods amiss." Milton liked to be in the minority, to bear up against the pressure of hostile opinion. "God intended to prove me," he wrote, "whether I durst take up alone a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst." The seraph Abdiel is a piece of self-portraiture; there is no more characteristic passage in all his works: "--The Seraph Abdiel, faithful found Among the faithless, faithful only he * * * Nor number nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth or change his constant mind, Though single. From amidst them forth he past Long way through hostile scorn which he sustained Superior, nor of violence feared aught; And with retorted scorn his back he turned On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed." Milton was no democrat; equality and fraternity were not his trade, though liberty was his passion. Liberty he defended against the tyranny of the mob, as of the king. He preferred a republic to a monarchy, since he thought it less likely to interfere with the independence of the private citizen. Political liberty, liberty of worship and belief, freedom of the press, freedom of divorce, he asserted them all in turn with unsurpassed eloquence. He proposed a scheme of education reformed from the clogs of precedent and authority. Even his choice of blank verse for _Paradise Lost_ he vindicated as a case of "ancient _liberty_ recovered to heroic song from this troublesome and modern bondage of riming."