at he should have reaped no meaner
reward than immortality.

It will have been observed that in the contract with Symmons "Paradise
Lost" is said to have been "lately licensed to be printed." The
censorship named in "Areopagitica" still prevailed, with the difference
that prelates now sat in judgment upon Puritans. The Archbishop gave or
refused license through his chaplains, and could not be ignored as
Milton had ignored the little Presbyterian Popes; Geneva in his person
must repair to Lambeth. Chaplain Tomkyns, who took cognisance of
"Paradise Lost," was fortunately a broad-minded man, disposed to live
and let live, though scrupling somewhat when he found "perplexity" and
"fear of change" imputed to "monarchs." His objections were overcome,
and on August 20, 1667--three weeks after the death of Cowley, and eight
days after Pepys had heard the deceased extolled as the greatest of
English poets--John Milton came forth clad as with adamantine mail in
the approbation of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it
was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for
weighing evil against good were hung--

"Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,"

one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister.
The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other
hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with
Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity
of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move,
if not, as Milton would have wished, "a noble and puissant nation
rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and
weary nation creeping slowly--Tomkyns and all--towards an era of liberty
and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's
impertinence.

CHAPTER VII.

The world's great epics group themselves in two divisions, which may be
roughly defined as the natural and the artificial. The spontaneous or
self-created epic is a confluence of traditions, reduced to symmetry by
the hand of a master. Such are the Iliad, the Odyssey, the great Indian
and Persian epics, the Nibelungen Lied. In such instances it may be
fairly said that the theme has chosen the poet, rather than the poet the
theme. When the epic is a work of reflection, the poet has deliberately
selected his subject, and has not, in general, relied so much upon the
wealth of pre-existing materials as up