the great Revolution."

We need not do more than observe that this union of heterogeneous aims
must always end, as it has in this case, in the production of a work at
once overgrown and incomplete. A great deal which has only a slight
bearing on the character of Milton is inserted; much that is necessary
to a true history of "British thought and British society" is of
necessity left out. The period of Milton's life which is included in
the published volume makes the absurdity especially apparent. In
middle life Milton was a great controversialist on contemporary topics;
and though it would not be proper for a biographer to load his pages
with a full account of all such controversies, yet some notice of the
most characteristic of them would be expected from him. In this part
of Milton's life some reference to public events would be necessary;
and we should not severely censure a biographer if the great interest
of those events induced him to stray a little from his topic. But the
first thirty years of Milton's life require a very different treatment.
He passed those years in the ordinary musings of a studious and
meditative youth; it was the period of "Lycidas" and "Comus"; he then
dreamed the

"Sights which youthful poets dream
On summer eve by haunted stream." [3]

We do not wish to have this part of his life disturbed, to a greater
extent than may be necessary, with the harshness of public affairs.
Nor is it necessary that it should be so disturbed: a life of poetic
retirement requires but little reference to anything except itself; in
a biography of Mr. Tennyson we should not expect to hear of the Reform
Bill or the Corn Laws. Mr. Masson is, however, of a different opinion:
he thinks it necessary to tell us, not only all which Milton did, but
everything also that he might have heard of.

The biography of Mr. Keightley is on a very different scale: he tells
the story of Milton's career in about half a small volume. Probably
this is a little too concise, and the narrative is somewhat dry and
bare. It is often, however, acute, and is always clear; and even were
its defects greater than they are, we should think it unseemly to
criticize the last work of one who has performed so many useful
services to literature with extreme severity.

The bare outline of Milton's life is very well known. We have all
heard that he was born in the latter years of King James, just when
Puritanism was collecting its stre