rd Phillips, and was
contained in a little Latin essay appended to Buchlerus's "Treasury of
Poetical Phrases."

"John Milton, in addition to other most elegant writings of his,
both in English and Latin, has recently published 'Paradise Lost,'
a poem which, whether we regard the sublimity of the subject, or
the combined pleasantness and majesty of the style, or the
sublimity of the invention, or the beauty of its images and
descriptions of nature, will, if I mistake not, receive the name
of truly heroic, inasmuch as by the suffrages of many not
unqualified to judge, it is reputed to have reached the perfection
of this kind of poetry."

The "many not unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the
age, Dryden. Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer--pleasing
anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of
Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal.

While "Paradise Lost" was thus slowly upbearing its author to the
highest heaven of fame, Milton was achieving other titles to renown, one
of which he deemed nothing inferior. We shall remember Ellwood's hint
that he might find something to say about Paradise Found, and the "muse"
into which it cast him. When, says the Quaker, he waited upon Milton
after the latter's return to London, Milton "showed me his second poem,
called 'Paradise Regained,' and in a pleasant tone said to me, 'This is
owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me
at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.'" Ellwood does not tell
us the date of this visit, and Phillips may be right in believing that
"Paradise Regained" was entirely composed after the publication of
"Paradise Lost"; but it seems unlikely that the conception should have
slumbered so long in Milton's mind, and the most probable date is
between Michaelmas, 1665, and Lady-day, 1666. Phillips records that
Milton could never hear with patience "Paradise Regained" "censured to
be much inferior" to "Paradise Lost." "The most judicious," he adds,
agreed with him, while allowing that "the subject might not afford such
variety of invention," which was probably all that the injudicious
meant. There is no external evidence of the date of his next and last
poem, "Samson Agonistes," but its development of Miltonic mannerisms
would incline us to assign it to the latest period possible. The poems
were licensed by Milton's old friend, Thomas