look for a singular
purity; but also, and with equal probability, for singular
self-confidence, a certain unsympathizing straitness, and perhaps a few
singular errors.

The character of the ascetic or austere species of goodness is almost
exactly embodied in Milton. Men, indeed, are formed on no ideal type:
human nature has tendencies too various, and circumstances too complex;
all men's characters have sides and aspects not to be comprehended in a
single definition: but in this case, the extent to which the character
of the man as we find it delineated approaches to the moral abstraction
which we sketch from theory is remarkable. The whole being of Milton
may, in some sort, be summed up in the great commandment of the austere
character, "Reverence thyself." We find it expressed in almost every
one of his singular descriptions of himself,--of those striking
passages which are scattered through all his works, and which add to
whatever interest may intrinsically belong to them one of the rarest of
artistic charms, that of magnanimous autobiography. They have been
quoted a thousand times, but one of them may perhaps be quoted again:

"I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning
bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where, the opinion was,
it might be soonest attained; and as the manner is, was not unstudied
in those authors which are most commended: whereof some were grave
orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved indeed, but as
my age then was, so I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac
poets, whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing
sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy
and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and for their matter, which
what it is there be few who know not, I was so allured to read, that no
recreation came to me better welcome. For that it was then those years
with me which are excused, though they be least severe, I may be saved
the labor to remember ye. Whence having observed them to account it
the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to
praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love, those
high perfections which under one or other name they took to celebrate,
I thought with myself by every instinct and presage of nature, which is
not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to this task might with
such diligence as they used embolden me; and that