in him than in any other Poet." Joseph Warton gave poetical expression to the same opinion when he spoke of "those vales of joy" Where MARO and MUSAEUS sit And to the Briton gives his amaranthine crown.2 Even the conservative Critical Review remarked that the works of Shakespeare and Milton were "superior to all those of antiquity," and one of the editors of Paradise Lost declared that its author might "be said to be much superior to Homer and Virgil." Richardson, accordingly, had ample grounds not only for asserting that Milton "Excell'd All Ancients and Moderns," but for adding, "I take leave to Say so upon Many Good Authorities." 5 There can, then, be no question that from the beginning of the century Milton's greatness was recognized by all, that he was, by pretty general consent, at least the equal of Homer and Virgil, that his epic was extravagantly praised by many, and that each of his shorter pieces was regarded by some persons as the greatest of its kind ever written. The effect upon the public of such an increasing flow of Miltonic adulation must have been very great. So great indeed was it that by an impish irony which would have delighted Swift the most austere and lofty of English poets became, in a notably artificial and prosaic age, the fashion. There can be no question of the fact. Even Johnson bears unwilling and scornful witness to it by protesting that Addison "has made Milton an universal favourite, with whom readers of every class think it necessary to be pleased." Nor was the idea peculiar to Johnson; for some years earlier Cibber had affirmed that as a result of the Spectator papers "it became even unfashionable not to have read" Milton." Warburton also, according to 1 Dodsley's Museum (1747), iii. 284. 2 To Health, in Odes (1746), 18. Cf. an anonymous poem entitled Milton (Univ. Mag., 1780, lxvii. 375): Unenvying Greece and Rome their claims resign, And own the palm of Poetry is thine. Thomas Newcomb said almost the same thing in the second stanza of his On Milton's Paradice Lost (Miscellaneous Poems, 1740, p. 17). 1 Gray, spoke of "the World . . . obliged by fashion to admire" Milton and Shakespeare; and the dilettante Horace Walpole asked a friend to procure him "a print of Vallombrosa," because of the "passion there is for it in England, as Milton has mentioned it." As late as 1793 John Aikin declared, "A relish for the works of Milton is not only a test of sensibility to the more exquisite beauties of poetry, but a kind of measure of the exaltation of the mind in its moral and religious sentiments." 2 Thomas Warton, though unwilling to go so far as this, anticipated Tennyson's oft-quoted dictum by asserting, "He who wishes to know whether he has a true taste for Poetry or not, should consider, whether he is highly delighted or not with the perusal of Milton's Lycidas." 3 "He who professes he has no Taste for Milton," remarked still another, "is justly deemed to have no Taste for Polite Literature," a phrase that recalls Steele's surprising reference to Otway, Milton, and Dryden as among "the most polite Writers of the Age." 5 But Steele had previously implied that the loftiest of English poets occupied this anomalous position; for in one of the early numbers of the Tatler Mr. Bickerstaff visits Sappho, "a fine lady" who, through breaking a fan "wherein were so admirably drawn our first parents in Paradise asleep in each other's arms," has been led to "reading the same representation in two of our greatest poets. . . . All Milton's thoughts," declares the fair chatterer, "are wonderfully just and natural, in this inimitable description. . . . But now I cannot forgive this odious thing, this Dryden." On a later occasion Sappho repeats to some ladies lines from two poets, Sir John Suckling and Milton, who had said "the tenderest things she had ever read" on the subject of love; and in still another issue of the Tatler Milton's lines on wedded love are quoted at a wedding breakfast. No wonder Pope remarked, “Our wives read Milton." But even in 1702, when Steele was just beginning to write, a would-be wit and critic was represented as slight 1 See Gray's letter to Wharton, Oct. 7, 1757, and Walpole's to Horace Mann, May 13, 1752 (Good, pp. 183, 219). 2 Letters from a Father to his Son (1800), ii. 269 (Good, p. 138). In his edition of Milton's minor poems (1785), p. 34. 4 John Marchant, in his edition of Paradise Lost (1751), p. viii. This is the more significant because it occurs in the Ladies Library (1714), i. 2–4 (Good, p. 157). Tatler, nos. 6, 40, 79. In the Student (1751, ii. 381), “a giddy young girl" named Flirtilla falls into "a rhapsodic vision" while reading Milton's description of Pandemonium (Good, p. 184); and Elizabeth Rowe speaks of a young lady who was so absorbed in reading Milton in the park as not to notice an approaching admirer (Works, 1796, i. 115). 'Imitations of Horace, II. i. 172. ing Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, and Congreve, but as being "a great Admirer of the incomparable Milton," whose "Sublime" he "fondly endeavours to imitate." 1 The inevitable result of this homage was that it came to require courage to say anything whatever against "the favourite poet of this nation," as John Jortin called him." "Whoever," remarked the Monthly Review in 1760, "at this time ventures to carp at . . . Paradise Lost, must whisper his criticism with caution"; 3 and even the great Chesterfield, in admitting to his son, "I cannot possibly read. . . Milton through," was constrained to add, "Keep this secret for me; for if it should be known, I should be abused by every tasteless pedant, and every solid divine, in England." 4 Presumably there were many who, like Chesterfield, dared not avow their indifference to a work which was regarded not only as "the finest poem in the world" but as a touchstone of poetic taste; yet such persons must have kept their thoughts to themselves, for adverse comments rarely found their way into print. And though some, no doubt, affected a liking for the epic which they did not feel, the genuine enthusiasm of hundreds of writers cannot be questioned. Milton must have been read, for imitations of his style and diction and borrowings from his phraseology are scattered through eighteenth-century literature Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In fact, so many persons really knew the pieces that it was probably not safe to pretend to a knowledge which one did not possess. Even shepherds were observed "poring in the fields" over the epic;" and a Bristol milkwoman, Ann Yearsley, whose versifying was encouraged by Hannah More, was "well acquainted" with the Night Thoughts and Paradise Lost but "was astonished to learn that Young and Milton had written anything else. Of Pope, she had only seen the Eloisa; and Dryden, Spenser, Thomson, and Prior, were quite unknown to her, even by name;" she had read "a few 1 The English Theophrastus, or the Manners of the Age (attributed to Abel Boyer), 10; pointed out in Dowden's Milton in the Eighteenth Century (British Acad., Proceedings, 1907-8, p. 279). 2 "Milton," in Remarks on Spenser's Poems (1734), 171. 3 xxii. 119. The same idea is expressed by the "Gentleman of Oxford" in the preface to his New Version of the P. L. (see above, p. 6). 4 Letter, Oct. 4, 1752. “I spoke of . . . Paradise Lost," wrote Cowper to Hayley, Feb. 24, 1793, "as every man must, who is worthy to speak of it at all." 5 Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iv. 43 n. " 3 of Shakespeare's plays." These facts almost make one accept at their face value such assertions as, "Paradise Lost . . . is read with Pleasure and Admiration, by Persons of every Degree and Condition;" 2 "The . . . Poem is in One's Hand;" every or, "Remarkable therefore it is, that Paradise Lost and Young's Night Thoughts are read by all sorts of people. . . . the common people . . . are fond of Milton's poems. or, So general, in fact, did this fondness become that children were early introduced to the poems. It will be remembered that the Swan of Lichfield “lisped” — if a swan may be permitted to lisp Allegro and Penseroso "when only in her third year," and that Cowper's enthusiasm dated from his boyhood. Ebenezer Elliott could in his sixteenth year repeat the first, second, and sixth books of Paradise Lost "without missing a word"; and a twelve-year-old girl, Caroline Symmons, was so 'passionately attached' to Milton that to have been the author of his octosyllabics she 'would have declined no personal sacrifice of face or form.' In order that children might appreciate the beauties of Milton, editions of his poems were prepared especially for them. The popular clergyman, Dr. Dodd, recommended his Familiar Explanation of the Poetical Works of Milton "especially to Parents, and those who have the Care of Youth; if they are desirous that their Children and Trusts should be acquainted with the Graces of the British Homer. . . . The fair Sex in particular," he added, "will receive great Advantages from it." As early as 1717 a "Collection of Poems from our most Celebrated English Poets, designed for the Use of Young Gentlemen and 1 Mo. Rev., lxxiii. 218 (1785). The reading of Paradise Lost was recommended in John Hill's Actor (1755, p. 96) as the ideal training for a player. 2 William Massey, Remarks upon P. L. (1761), p. iii; cf. p. v, "this Book, that is now so universally read." 'James Paterson, Complete Commentary on P. L. (1744), p. ii. 4 Robert Potter, The Art of Criticism, as exemplified in Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1789), 184-5, 188. It should be observed, however, that William Hayley, in his life of Milton (2d ed., 1796, p. 226), speaks of him as "more admired than beloved," and that Cowper, in a letter to Hayley (May 9, 1792), owns it is "no small disgrace to us English that being natives of a country that has produced the finest poem in the world, so few of us ever look into it. I am acquainted myself," he continues, "with at least a score, who account themselves pretty good judges of poetry too, and persons of taste, who yet know no more of the poem than the mere subject of it." Neither of these men, however, would have been content with much less than idolatry of Milton, and Cowper at least did not have a wide or a representative circle of acquaintances. 'See pp. 7, 10, above. 'Autobiography, in Athenaeum, Jan. 12, 1850, p. 48. 7 Memoir appended to F. Wrangham's Raising of Jaïrus' Daughter (1804), 25. * Preface (dated 1761), pp. vi-vii. Ladies, at Schools," 1 included eighteen selections from the epic and one from Samson, together with Dryden's lines on Milton; and in 1783 appeared The Beauties of Milton, Thomson, and Young, for “the rising youth of both sexes." Nearly half of Poetry Explained for Young People (1802), by the father of Maria Edgeworth, is devoted to Allegro and Penseroso; while still later in the century the great actress, Mrs. Siddons, made an abridgment of the epic for her children, because she "was naturally desirous that their minds should be inspired with an early admiration of Milton." This was afterwards published as The Story of our First Parents, selected from Paradise Lost for the Use of Young Persons (1822). A similar work, The Story of Paradise Lost for Children,2 a prose dialogue which included some of the original verse, was deemed worthy of republication in New England, where, it is said, "during the greater part of the nineteenth century ... the Paradise Lost was practically a text-book. Children were compelled, as an exercise, to commit long passages of it by heart." 3 Such tasks were not always so distasteful as one might expect. We are told that the war of the angels was the "favourite of children," and we know that it was on the basis of his own boyhood enthusiasm for the octosyllabics and the epic that Cowper recommended the memorizing of parts of them by another boy. It was natural that Milton should be urged upon children if there were many persons, as there seem to have been, who believed with Dr. Johnson that "in reading Paradise Lost we read a book of universal knowledge," and especially if many agreed with a certain editor 1 The Virgin Muse, compiled by James Greenwood. 2 By Eliza W. Bradburn, Portland, 1830, “first American, from the London edition." Cf. below, p. 36. 3 3 C. F. Adams, in the New York Nation, lxxxvii. 600 (1908). According to Mr. Adams, the Puritans of the new world were fifty years behind the mother country in their recognition of the religious epic. "Milton's poems," he writes, "were almost unknown in New England until about the middle of the eighteenth century. There is no well-authenticated case of a copy of Paradise Lost on a Massachusetts book-shelf before that period yet brought to light. From about the year 1750 to the beginning of the nineteenth century there is abundant evidence of growing familiarity." Many Americans now living learned grammar by parsing Paradise Lost. Potter, Art of Criticism, 13; Cowper to William Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782, and cf. pp. 7, 10, above. “Milton is my favourite,” wrote the profligate Lord Lyttelton in the third quarter of the century; ". . . I read him with delight as soon as I could read at all" (quoted in Thomas Frost's life of Lyttelton, 1876, pp. 3-4). Southey tells us that Paradise Lost was one of the first books he owned (Life and Correspondence, 1849, i. 86); and W. S. Walker was deep in Milton at six years old (i. e., in 1801, see his Poetical Remains, ed. Moultrie, 1852, pp. iv-v). 5 "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 183. Johnson probably refers to the first lines of |