"Come, cease lamentation, lift it up no more;
for verily these things stand fast;"

so Milton ends the long debate of his poem, not with victory, but with
silence--

"He, unobserved,
Home to his mother's house private returned."

It is indeed just the opposite in one way of the conclusion of
_Paradise Lost_. The man and woman who had fallen before the Tempter
had no home to return to: they must seek a new "place of rest"
elsewhere in the new world that was before them. The Man who {249} had
vanquished him could go back quietly to the home of his childhood. But
the contrast is external, the likeness essential. For the first man as
well as the second there is an appointed place of rest and a Providence
to guide: the two poems can both end on the same note of that peace
which follows upon the right understanding of all great experiences.

This, which is only implied in his earlier poems, is almost expressly
set forth in the last of all Milton's words, the already quoted
conclusion of Samson--

"His servants He, with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event,
With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
And calm of mind, all passion spent."

Milton was a passionate man who lived in passionate times. Neither his
passions nor those of the men of his day are of very much matter to us
now. But the art in which he "spent" them, in which, that is to say,
he embodied, transcended and glorified them, till through it he and we
alike attain to consolation and calm, is an eternal possession not only
of the English race but of the whole world.

{250}

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The literature that in one way or another deals with Milton is, of
course, immense. His name fills more than half of one of the volumes
of the great British Museum Catalogue, more than sixteen pages being
devoted to the single item of _Paradise Lost_. They afford perhaps the
most striking of all proofs of the universality of his genius; for they
include translations into no fewer than eighteen languages, many of
which possess a large choice of versions. Into more than a very small
fraction of such a vast field it is obviously impossible to enter here.
Only a few notes can be given, under the four headings of Poetry,
Prose, Biography and Criticism.

POETRY

Of the poetry, it may be worth saying, though MSS. hardly come within
the scope of a brief bibliography of this sort, that a manuscript,
mainly in the hand