. And down the
corridors of Time comes to us the shrill wail of neglected wives, and the
crash of broken hearts echoes like the sound of a painter falling through
a skylight. All this is the price of achievement.

* * * * *

Making a little look backward into Milton's life, we find that until his
thirty-third year he had not tasted of practical life at all. About that
time his father, in a sort of desperation, packed him off to the
Continent, in charge of a trusty attendant, who acted in the dual capacity
of servant and friend. The letters he carried to influential men in Paris,
Florence, Venice and Rome secured him the Speaker's eye, and his beauty
and learning did the rest. His march was that of a conquering hero. In
Paris he surprised the savants by addressing them in their own tongue, and
reciting from their chief writers. This was repeated in Italy; and at
Florence, as a sort of half-challenge for permission to occupy the highest
seat, he was invited to read from his own compositions, which he did with
such grace and power that thereafter all doors flew open at his touch.

Returning to England after an absence of fifteen months, he found his
father's household broken up, and through bad investments, the family
fortune sadly depleted. But travel had added cubits to his stature: the
mixture with men had put him into possession of his own, and he now felt
well able to cope with the world. He secured modest lodgings in Saint
Bride's Churchyard, and set to work to make a living and a name by
authorship. His head teemed with subjects for poems, but cash advances
were not forthcoming from publishers, and, to bridge over, he tried
tutoring.

It was at this time that "Paradise Lost," the one matchless epic of
English literature, was conceived. Rough jottings were made as to
divisions and heads, and a few stanzas were written of the immortal poem
that was not to be completed for a score of years.

The first volume of Milton's poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred
Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was
known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London
reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and
marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a few friends and divers
enemies.

From a man of leisure Milton had suddenly become a worker, whose every
daylight hour was crammed with duties. His skill as a teacher b