The Project Gutenberg eBook, Milton, by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

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Title: Milton

Author: Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

Release Date: June 4, 2007 [eBook #21677]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON***

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MILTON

by

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

Author of
'Style,' 'Wordsworth,' &c.

Tenth Impression

London
Edward Arnold
41 & 43 Maddox Street, Bond Street, W.
1915

TO
R. A. M. STEVENSON
WHOSE RADIANT AND SOARING INTELLIGENCE
ENLIGHTENED AND GUIDED ME
DURING THE YEARS OF OUR LOST COMPANIONSHIP
THIS UNAVAILING TRIBUTE OF
MEMORY AND LOVE

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PAGE

"Sciences of conceit"; the difficulties and imperfections of literary
criticism; illustrated in the case of Shakespeare; and of Milton;
the character and temper of Milton; intensity, simplicity,
egotism; his estimate of himself 1

CHAPTER I
John Milton

His birth, and death; his education; early life in London; ships and
shipping; adventurers and players; Milton and the Elizabethan
drama; the poetic masters of his youth; state of the Church of
England; Baxter's testimony; growing unrest; Milton's early
poems; the intrusion of politics; the farewell to mirth; the
Restoration, and Milton's attitude; the lost paradise of the
early poems; Milton's Puritanism; his melancholy; the political
and public preoccupations of the later poems; the drama of
Milton's life; his egotism explained; an illustration from
_Lycidas_; the lost cause; the ultimate triumph 12

CHAPTER II
The Prose Works

Poets and politics; practical aim of Milton's prose writings; the
reforms advocated by him, with one exception, unachieved;
critical mourners over Milton's political writings; the mourners
comforted; Milton's classification of his prose tracts; the
occasional nat