John Milton, born 1608, leaned more to the opposite ideal of his native language, and beyond the power of any other writer expressed the full majesty of the old classic element. Spenser was charmingly Teutonic; but Milton was more at home in the Latin part of his mighty vernacular. While each of this glorious trio spoke in a dialect peculiar to himself, they all alike were intense and devoted lovers of nature. Chaucer sparkles with the dew of morning. Spenser lies bathed in the sylvan shade. Milton glows with orient light. One might almost fancy that he had gazed himself blind, and had then been raised to the sky, and there stood and waited, like "blind Orion hungering for the morn." So abundantly had he stored his mind with visions of natural beauty, that, when all without became dark, he was still most rich in his inward treasure, and "ceased not to wander where the muses haunt clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill." We have reserved another name, the greatest of them all, for the concluding item in this comprehensive sketch of literature during the age of Leo X. The position of the notice we give him is appropriate, since he garnered all anterior wisdom and genius into himself, to be bodied forth in diversified forms of consummate worth. William Shakspeare was born in 1564, twelve years after Walter Raleigh, and thirty-five before Oliver Cromwell. He was twenty-four years old when the first newspaper was published, and should be regarded as the truest exponent of the romantic cycle he came fully to comprehend, exhaust, and terminate.