e best, in spite
of its unfairness, is that of Johnson, to be found in his _Lives of the
Poets_. The best short modern Life is Mark Pattison's masterly, though
occasionally wilful, little book in the English Men of letters Series.
For the library and for students all other biographies have been
superseded by the great work of David Masson, who spared no labours to
investigate every smallest detail of the life of Milton and to place
the whole in the setting of an elaborate history of England in Milton's
day. The value of the book is somewhat impaired by the very strong
Puritan and anti-Cavalier partisanship of the writer; and its style
suffers from an imitation of Carlyle. But nothing can seriously
detract from the immense debt every student of Milton owes to the
author of this monumental biography which appeared in seven volumes,
1859-1894.

An interesting critical discussion of the various portraits
representing or alleged to represent Milton is prefixed to the
Catalogue of the Exhibition held at Christ's College Cambridge during
the Milton Tercentenary in 1908. It is by Dr. G. C. Williamson.

CRITICISM

A poet at once so learned and so great as Milton inevitably invited
criticism. The first and most generous of his critics {253} was his
great rival Dryden, who, in a few words of the preface to _The State of
Innocence_, published the year after Milton's death, led the note of
praise, which has been echoed ever since by speaking of _Paradise Lost_
as "one of the greatest, most noble and most sublime poems which either
this age or nation has produced." The next great name in the list is
that of Addison, who contributed a series of papers on Milton to the
_Spectator_ in 1712. Like all criticism except the work of the supreme
masters, they are written too exclusively from the point of view of
their own day to retain more than a small fraction of their value after
two hundred years have passed. But they are of considerable historical
interest and may still be read with pleasure, like everything written
by Addison. A less sympathetic but finer piece of work is the critical
part of Johnson's famous _Life_. It is full of crudities of every
sort, such as the notorious remark that "no man could have fancied that
he read _Lycidas_ with pleasure had he not known the author"; and
perhaps nothing Johnson over wrote displayed more nakedly the narrow
limits of his appreciation of poetry. But, in spite of all its
defec