ying a great deal. Italians, Frenchmen,
Dutchmen, Englishmen even, had doubtless treated the Creation and the Fall,
Adam and Satan, before him. Perhaps he read them; perhaps he borrowed from
them. What then? Does any one believe that Andreini or Vondel, Sylvester or
Du Bartas, could have written, or did in any measurable degree contribute
to the writing of _Paradise Lost_? If he does he must be left to his
opinion.

Reference may perhaps be made to some remarks in Chapter IV. on the
comparative position of Milton in English poetry with the only two writers
who can be compared to him, if bulk and majesty of work be taken into
consideration, and not merely occasional bursts of poetry. Of his own
poetical powers I trust that I shall not be considered a niggard admirer,
because, both in the character of its subject (if we are to consider
subjects at all) and in its employment of rhyme, that greatest mechanical
aid of the poet, _The Faerie Queene_ seems to me greater, or because
Milton's own earlier work seems to me to rank higher than _Paradise Lost_.
The general opinion is, of course, different; and one critic of no mean
repute, Christopher North, has argued that _Paradise Lost_ is the only
"great poem" in existence. That question need not be argued here. It is
sufficient to say that Milton is undoubtedly one of the few great poets in
the history of the world, and that if he falls short of Homer, Dante, and
Shakespere, it is chiefly because he expresses less of that humanity, both
universal and quintessential, which they, and especially the last, put into
verse. Narrowness is his fault. But the intense individuality which often
accompanies narrowness is his great virtue--a virtue which no poet, which
no writer either in verse or prose, has ever had in greater measure than
he, and which hardly any has been able to express with more varied and
exquisite harmony.

Jeremy Taylor, the ornament and glory of the English pulpit, was born at
Cambridge in 1613. He was the son of a barber, but was well educated, and
was able to enter Caius College as a sizar at thirteen. He spent seven
years there, and took both degrees and orders at an unusually early age.
Apparently, however, no solid endowment was offered him in his own
university, and he owed such preferment as he had (it was never very great)
to a chance opportunity of preaching at St. Paul's and a recommendation to
Laud. That prelate--to whom all the infinite malignity of polit