MUCH of the criticism on Milton, if not hostile, is apologetic, and it is considered quite correct to say we “do not care” for him. Partly this indifference is due to his Nonconformity. The “superior” Englishman who makes a jest of the doctrines and ministers of the Established Church always pays homage to it because it is _respectable_, and sneers at Dissent. Another reason why Milton does not take his proper place is that his theme is a theology which for most people is no longer vital. A religious poem if it is to be deeply felt must embody a living faith. The great poems of antiquity are precious to us in proportion to our acceptance, now, as fact, of what they tell us about heaven and earth. There are only a few persons at present who perceive that in substance the account which was given in the seventeenth century of the relation between man and God is immortal and worthy of epic treatment. A thousand years hence a much better estimate of Milton will be possible than that which can be formed to-day. We attribute to him mechanic construction in dead material because it is dead to ourselves. Even Mr. Ruskin who was far too great not to recognise in part at least Milton’s claims, says that “Milton’s account of the most important event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod’s account of the decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being for an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith” (_Sesame and Lilies_, section iii.). Mr. Mark Pattison, quoting part of this passage, remarks with justice, “on the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the character of the poet until we feel that throughout _Paradise Lost_, as in _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson_, Milton felt himself to be standing on the sure ground of fact and reality” (_English Men of Letters_—Milton, p. 186, ed. 1879).