In contrast, look at the life of Charles Lamb. He was a poor clerk at a pitiful salary, struggling to increase his income by literary work in his spare time, with a dangerous appetite for alcohol, and an insane sister to take care of. He, himself, constantly dreaded insanity. Yet he kept up a cheerful and continual resistance to his craving for drink, although he often took a drop too much. In order to care for his sister, who had killed her mother in one of her attacks, he gave up his sweetheart and settled down to the brave and heartrending task of devotion to the unhappy invalid. This lasted for thirty-three years, during which he never murmured except when her attacks forced him to place her in an asylum. One of his friends leaves the record of meeting Charles and Mary Lamb walking across the fields to the hospital with tears streaming down their faces. Yet in spite of all his troubles Lamb's essays have a delicacy and a cheerfulness that never reveal the burden he had to bear. He is one of the great heroes of English literature. John Milton was another such hero. As a young man he won great distinction as a poet and a scholar; so much so that when he went to Italy the greatest Italian authors and critics praised his Italian and Latin poetry as the best of that day, superior to anything written during that time in Italy itself. He was received there with boundless enthusiasm and was having the time of his life, so to speak, when the news reached him of the Puritan rebellion against Charles the First. Without a moment's hesitation he abandoned his tour and came back to England. There he acted as foreign correspondent for Cromwell's Government and kept England safe from attacks by France and the rest of Europe through his able diplomacy. He worked day and night until he fell ill and eventually lost his eyesight. To make matters worse, the Puritans were deprived of their power and Milton's enemies then persecuted him so that he had to fly for his life. He spent the rest of his days in a humble cottage, while his daughters grumbled because he made them transcribe "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." It seems as if his sacrifice for his country was utterly unrewarded, until we remember that his name to-day is almost the first in its long roll of poets.