The grand loneliness of Milton in his latter years, while it
makes him the most impressive figure in our literary history, is
reflected also in his maturer poems by a sublime independence of human
sympathy like that with which mountains fascinate and rebuff us. But it
is idle to talk of the loneliness of one the habitual companions of whose
mind were the Past and Future. I always seem to see him leaning in his
blindness a hand on the shoulder of each, sure that the one will guard
the song which the other had inspired.
Footnotes:
[358] The Life of John Milton: narrated in Connection with the
Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By David
Masterson, M.D., LL.D. Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature
in the University of Edinburgh. Vols. I., II. 1638-1643. London and
New York: Macmillan & Co. 1871. 8vo. pp. xii, 608.
The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited, with Introduction, Notes
and an Essay on Milton's English by David Masson, M.A., LL.D.
Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of
Edinburgh. 3 vols. 8vo. Macmillan & Co. 1874.
[359] Book I. 562-567.
[360] Ibid., 615-618.
[361] Apology for Smectymnuus.
[362]
"For him I was not sent, nor yet to free
That people, victor once, now vile and base,
Deservedly made vassal.
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