appointed Latin or Foreign Secretary to the Government of Oliver Cromwell; and for the next ten years his time was taken up with official work, and with writing prose-volumes in defence of the action of the Republic. In 1660 the Restoration took place; and Milton was at length free, in his fifty-third year, to carry out his long-cherished scheme of writing a great Epic poem. He chose the subject of the fall and the restoration of man. +Paradise Lost+ was completed in 1665; but, owing to the Plague and the Fire of London, it was not published till the year 1667. Milton’s young Quaker friend, Ellwood, said to him one day: “Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?” +Paradise Regained+ was the result-- a work which was written in 1666, and appeared, along with +Samson Agonistes+, in the year 1671. Milton died in the year 1674-- about the middle of the reign of Charles II. He had been three times married. 9. +L’Allegro+ (or “The Cheerful Man”) is a companion poem to +Il Penseroso+ (or “The Meditative Man”). The poems present two contrasted views of the life of the student. They are written in an irregular kind of octosyllabic verse. The +Comus+-- mostly in blank verse-- is a lyrical drama; and Milton’s work was accompanied by a musical composition by the then famous musician Henry Lawes. +Lycidas+-- a poem in irregular rhymed verse-- is a threnody on the death of Milton’s young friend, Edward King, who was drowned in sailing from Chester to Dublin. This poem has been called “the touchstone of taste;” the man who cannot admire it has no feeling for true poetry. The +Paradise Lost+ is the story of how Satan was allowed to plot against the happiness of man; and how Adam and Eve fell through his designs. The style is the noblest in the English language; the music of the rhythm is lofty, involved, sustained, and sublime. “In reading ‘Paradise Lost,’” says Mr Lowell, “one has a feeling of spaciousness such as no other poet gives.” +Paradise Regained+ is, in fact, the story of the Temptation, and of Christ’s triumph over the wiles of Satan. Wordsworth says: “‘Paradise Regained’ is most perfect in execution of any written by Milton;” and Coleridge remarks that “it is in its kind the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest.” +Samson Agonistes+ (“Samson in Struggle”) is a drama, in highly irregular unrhymed verse, in which the poet sets forth his own unhappy fate-- “Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.” It is, indeed, an autobiographical poem-- it is the story of the last years of the poet’s life.