labor; those who desire vehemently will be vexed if they do
not obtain that which they desire. As is the strength of the impelling
tendency, so, other things being equal, is the pain which it will
experience if it be baffled. Those, too, who are set on what is high
will be proportionately offended by the intrusion of what is low.
Accordingly, Milton is described by those who knew him as "a harsh and
choleric man." "He had," we are told, "a gravity in his temper, not
melancholy, or not till the latter part of his life, not sour, not
morose or ill-natured, but a certain severity of mind; a mind not
condescending to little things;" [10] and this although his daughter
remembered that he was delightful company, the life of conversation,
and that he was so "on account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected
cheerfulness and civility." Doubtless this may have been so when he
was at ease, and at home; but there are unmistakable traces of the
harsher tendency in almost all his works.

Some of the peculiarities of the ascetic character were likewise
augmented by his studious disposition. This began very early in life,
and continued till the end. "My father," he says, "destined me . . .
to the study of polite literature, which I embraced with such avidity,
that from the twelfth year of my age I hardly ever retired to rest from
my studies till midnight; which was the first source of injury to my
eyes, to the natural weakness of which were added frequent headaches:
all of which not retarding my eagerness after knowledge, he took care
to have me instructed--" etc.[11] Every page of his works shows the
result of this education. In spite of the occupations of manhood, and
the blindness and melancholy of old age, he still continued to have his
principal pleasure in that "studious and select" reading, which, though
often curiously transmuted, is perpetually involved in the very texture
of his works. We need not stay to observe how a habit in itself so
austere conduces to the development of an austere character. Deep
study, especially deep study which haunts and rules the imagination,
necessarily removes men from life, absorbs them in themselves; purifies
their conduct, with some risk of isolating their sympathies; develops
that loftiness of mood which is gifted with deep inspirations and
indulged with great ideas, but which tends in its excess to engender a
contempt for others, and a self-appreciation which is even more
displea