f his narrowness in the open dislike, or at best grudging
recognition, of that half of the world which is not Puritan and not
Republican, and still looks upon history, custom, law and loyalty with
very different eyes from his. But those who exact that {15} penalty do
themselves at least as much injustice as they do Milton. To deprive
ourselves of Milton because we are neither Puritan moralists nor Old
Testament politicians is an act of intellectual suicide. The wise, as
the world goes on, may differ more and more from some of Milton's
opinions. They can never escape the greatness either of the poet or of
the man. Men's appreciation of Milton is almost in proportion to their
instinctive understanding of what greatness is. Other poets, perhaps,
have things of greater beauty: none in English, none, perhaps, in any
language, fills us with a more exalting conviction of the greatness of
human life. No man rises from an hour with Milton without feeling
ashamed of the triviality of his life and certain that he can, if he
will, make it less trivial. It is impossible not to catch from him
some sense of the high issues, immediate and eternal, on which human
existence ought to be conscious that it hangs. The world will be very
old before we can spare a man who can render us this service. We have
no one in England who renders it so imperiously as Milton.

This part of his permanent claim upon our attention belongs to all that
we know of him, to everything in his life so far as it is recorded,
{16} even to his prose, where its appearances are occasional, as well
as to his verse, where it is continuous and omnipresent. It is, of
course, in connection with the last that we are most conscious of it
and that it is most important. After all, the rest would have been
unknown or forgotten if he had not been a great poet. But it is not
merely by his force of mind and character, nor merely by the influence
they have upon us through the poetry, that he claims our attention
to-day. Altogether independently of that, the study of Milton is of
immense and special value to Englishmen. Except in poetry our English
contribution to the life of the arts in Europe has been comparatively
small. That very Puritanism which had so much to do with the greatness
of Milton has also had much to do with the general failure of
Englishmen to produce fine art, or even to care about it, or so much as
recognize it when they see it. Now Milton, Puritan