hold
that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem
produced in a civilized age....

"Of all people, children are the most imaginative. They abandon
themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is
strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect
of reality.... In a rude state of society, men are children with a
greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society
that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest
perfection. He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires
to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take
to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that
knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title
to superiority. His very talents will be a hinderance to him. His
difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits
which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that proficiency
will in general be proportioned to the vigor and activity of his
mind....

"If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater
difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education. He was
a profound and elegant classical scholar; he had studied all the
mysteries of Rabbinical literature; he was intimately acquainted
with every language of modern Europe from which either pleasure or
information was then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet
of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his
Latin verse."

And yet Macaulay goes on to say:

"The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most
remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the
excellence of that style which no rival has been able to equal, and
no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the
idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and
every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy,
or of music."

But how would it have been possible for Milton to have enriched his
poetry with all these elements in a primaeval age, when many of them
did not exist? Indeed, Milton's own words show how he regarded the
task of writing the "Paradise Lost," to which he had consecrated his
energies, In a pamphlet issued in 1641 he wrote:

"Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that
for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the