Before we notice these two cases of Milton, first of all let us ask--Who and what _is_ Milton? Dr. Johnson was furiously incensed with a certain man, by trade an author and manufacturer of books wholesale and retail, for introducing Milton's name into a certain index thus--'Milton, Mr. John.' That _Mister_, undoubtedly, was hard to digest. Yet very often it happens to the best of us--to men who are far enough from 'thinking small beer of themselves,'--that about ten o'clock, A. M., an official big-wig, sitting at Bow Street, calls upon the man to account for his _sprees_ of the last night, for his feats in knocking down lamp-posts and extinguishing watchmen, by this ugly demand of--'Who and what are you, sir?' And perhaps the poor man, sick and penitential for want of soda water, really finds a considerable difficulty in replying satisfactorily to the worthy _beek's_ apostrophe. Although, at five o'clock in the evening, should the culprit be returning into the country in the same coach as his awful interrogator, he might be very apt to look fierce, and retort this amiable inquiry, and with equal thirst for knowledge to demand, 'D--your eyes, if you come to _that_, who and what are _you_?' And the _beek_ in _his_ turn, though so apt to indulge his own curiosity at the expense of the public, might find it very difficult to satisfy that of others. The same thing happens to authors; and to great authors beyond all others. So accustomed are we to survey a great man through the cloud of years that has gathered round him--so impossible is it to detach him from the pomp and equipage of all who have quoted him, copied him, echoed him, lectured about him, disputed about him, quarrelled about him, that in the case of any Anacharsis the Scythian coming amongst us--any savage, that is to say, uninstructed in our literature, but speaking our language, and feeling an interest in our great men--a man could hardly believe at first how perplexed he would feel--how utterly at a loss for any _adequate_ answer to this question, suddenly proposed-_'Who and what was Milton?'_ That is to say, what is the place which he fills in his own vernacular literature? what station does he hold in universal literature?