fame, and which won Milton over from the dear-loved delights of academic groves and cathedral aisles to the anti-prelatic party. It acted on him, too, no doubt, and modified his studies by a characteristic controversial spirit, (his presentation of God is tinted with it)--a spirit not less busy indeed in political than in theological and ecclesiastical dispute, but carrying on the former almost always, more or less, in the guise of the latter. And so far as Pope's censure [1] of our poet,--that he makes God the Father a school divine--is just, we must attribute it to the character of his age, from which the men of genius, who escaped, escaped by a worse disease, the licentious indifference of a Frenchified court. Such was the 'nidus' or soil, which constituted, in the strict sense of the word, the circumstances of Milton's mind. In his mind itself there were purity and piety absolute; an imagination to which neither the past nor the present were interesting, except as far as they called forth and enlivened the great ideal, in which and for which he lived; a keen love of truth, which, after many weary pursuits, found a harbour in a sublime listening to the still voice in his own spirit, and as keen a love of his country, which, after a disappointment still more depressive, expanded and soared into a love of man as a probationer of immortality. These were, these alone could be, the conditions under which such a work as the Paradise Lost could be conceived and accomplished. By a life-long study Milton had known-- What was of use to know, What best to say could say, to do had done. His actions to his words agreed, his words To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart Contain'd of good, wise, fair, the perfect shape; and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest to the ages coming, in the 'Paradise Lost'. [2] Difficult as I shall find it to turn over these leaves without catching some passage, which would tempt me to stop, I propose to consider, 1st, the general plan and arrangement of the work; 2ndly, the subject with its difficulties and advantages; 3rdly, the poet's object, the spirit in the letter, the [Greek (transliterated): enthumion en muthps], the true school-divinity; and lastly, the characteristic excellencies of the poem, in what they consist, and by what means they were produced. 1. As to the plan and ordonnance of the Poem.