with no stinted admiration, I trust, and certainly
with no merely superstitious reverence. If I must round my discourse by
repeating something that I have already said or suggested, it shall be
this--that as he stands far aloof from his contemporaries, so in the
succession of great figures that mark for us the centuries of our
literature he is seen once more singular and a stranger. We bred
Shakespeare in our Midlands; he was nourished from the soil that still
grows our daily bread. But Milton was an alien conqueror. The crowd of
native-born Puritans, who sometimes (not without many searchings of heart
and sharp misgivings) attempt to claim him for their leader, have no
title in him. It is a proof of his dominating power, and no credit to
their intelligence, that they accept him as their representative. His
influence on the destinies and history of our literature might be
compared to the achievement of Napoleon while he was winning the
victories that changed the map of Europe. He could not change the
character of a people, nor perpetuate his dynasty. But nothing is as it
would have been without him. Our literature is as hospitable as the
Hindoo pantheon; the great revolutionary has won a place even in our
creed. And the writer has this advantage, at least, over the conqueror
and legislator, that he has bequeathed to us not maps, nor laws, but
poems, whose beauty, like the World's unwithered countenance, is bright
as at the day of their creation.

INDEX

[For the following Index I am indebted to the kindness of three of my
pupils, Miss F. Marston, Miss E. L. Morice, and Miss D. E. Yates.]

Abdiel, 72, 138-39, 156, 211
Abstract terms, Milton's use of, 227-31
Adam, 32, 35, 54, 64, 82-4, 87, 92, 95-6, 105, 112, 115, 122, 141-45,
148-50, 154-57, 160, 207, 222, 237, 248-50, 261
_Adamo_, 95
Addison, Joseph, 157-58, 206, 218, 242
_AEneid_, Virgil's, 158
Akenside, Mark, 243
Allegorical figures, Milton's, 237-38
_Amyntor and Theodora_, Mallet's, 243
Andreini, 95-7, 104, 106
Angelo, Michael, 88
_Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus_, 217
_Apology for Smectymnuus_, 16, 69, 71, 74
Arbuthnot, John, 218
_Areopagitica_, 43, 46, 48, 49, 52, 56-7, 65, 76, 180
Arianism, 86
Ariosto, 171
Armstrong, John, 242
_Art of English Poetry_, Bysshe's, 241
_Art of Preserving Health, The_, Armstrong's, 242
Arthurian Legend, 23, 60, 89-90
_Ascension Day_, Vaughan's, 257
Athanasian Creed, 86
_Atheni