all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief.
To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope,
but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St.
Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything,
in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the
moles of Hadrianus.[74]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 70: From the "Religio Medici."]

[Footnote 71: From Chapter V of "Urn Burial; or, a Discourse of the
Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk."]

[Footnote 72: Cambyses III, king of Persia who conquered Egypt in 525
B.C.]

[Footnote 73: A Roman emperor whose epitaph was cut in Greek, Latin,
Hebrew, Egyptian and Arabic.]

[Footnote 74: Now the Castle of St. Angelo in Rome.]

JOHN MILTON

Born in 1608, died in 1674; visited Italy in 1638; began his
poetical writings in 1640; Latin Secretary to the
Commonwealth in 1649; became totally blind in 1652; spared
at the Restoration under the Indemnity Act; published
"Paradise Lost" in 1667.

I

ON HIS OWN LITERARY AMBITION[75]

After I had, from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care
of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the tongues,
and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and
teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether
aught was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to
of my own choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but
chiefly the latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was
likely to live. But much latelier, in the private academies of Italy,
whither I was favored to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I
had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout--for the manner
is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading
there--met with acceptance above what was looked for; and other things
which I had shifted, in scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch
up among them, were received with written encomiums, which the
Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps, I began
thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home;
and not less to an inward prompting, which now grew daily upon me,
that by labor and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this
life, joined to the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written, to after-times, as they should n