The fact is, there were all kinds of Puritans. There were dismal precisians, like William Prynne, illiberal and vulgar fanatics, the Tribulation Wholesomes, Hope-on-high Bombys, and Zeal-of-the-land Busys, whose absurdities were the stock in trade of contemporary satirists from Jonson to Butler. But there were also gentlemen and scholars, like Fairfax, Marvell, Colonel Hutchinson, Vane, whose Puritanism was consistent with all elegant tastes and accomplishments. Was Milton’s Puritanism hurtful to his art? No and yes. It was in many ways an inspiration; it gave him _zeal_, a Puritan word much ridiculed by the Royalists; it gave refinement, distinction, selectness, elevation to his picture of the world. But it would be uncritical to deny that it also gave a certain narrowness and rigidity to his view of human life. It is curious how Milton’s early poems have changed places in favor with “Paradise Lost.” They were neglected for over a century. Joseph Warton testifies in 1756 that they had only “very lately met with a suitable regard”; had lain “in a sort of obscurity, the private enjoyment of a few curious readers.” And Dr. Johnson exclaims: “Surely no man could have fancied that he read ‘Lycidas’ with pleasure, had he not known its author.” There can be little doubt that nowadays Milton’s _juvenilia_ are more read than “Paradise Lost,” and by many—perhaps by a majority of readers—rated higher. In this opinion I do not share. “Paradise Lost” seems to me not only greater work, more important, than the minor pieces, but better poetry, richer and deeper. Yet one quality these early poems have which “Paradise Lost” has not—charm. Milton’s epic astonishes, moves, delights, but it does not fascinate. The youthful Milton was sensitive to many attractions which he afterwards came to look upon with stern disapproval. He went to the theatre and praised the comedies of Shakespeare and Jonson; he loved the romances of chivalry and fairy tales; he had no objection to dancing, ale drinking, the music of the fiddle, and rural sports; he writes to Diodati of the pretty girls on the London streets; he celebrates the Catholic and Gothic elegancies of English church architecture and ritual, the cloister’s pale, the organ music and full-voiced choir, the high embowed roof, and the storied windows which his military friends were soon to smash at Ely, Salisbury, Canterbury, Lichfield, as popish idolatries. But in “Iconoclastes” we find him sneering at the king for keeping a copy of Shakespeare in his closet. In his treatise “Of Reformation” he denounces the prelates for “embezzling the treasury of the church on painted and gilded walls of temples, wherein God hath testified to have no delight.” Evidently the Anglican service was one of those “gay religions, rich with pomp and gold,” to which he alludes in “Paradise Lost.” A chorus commends Samson the Nazarite for drinking nothing but water. Modern