only piece of pleasantry in Paradise Lost is where the evil spirits are described as rallying the angels upon the success of their new-invented artillery. This passage I look upon to be the most exceptionable in the whole poem, as being nothing else but a string of puns, and those too very indifferent ones. . . . . Milton has but few failings in this kind (i. e., prosaic expressions], of which, however, you may meet with some instances, as in the following passages:

Milton, by the above-mentioned helps [metaphors, foreign idioms, etc.] and by the choice of the noblest words and phrases which our tongue would afford him, has carried our language to a greater height than any of the English poets have ever done before or after him, and made the sublimity of his style equal to that of his sentiments. . . . . I should, under this head of the language, consider Milton's numbers, in which he has made use of several elisions which are not customary among other English poets, as may be particularly observed in his cutting off the letter 'y' when it precedes a vowel. This, and some other innovations in the measure of his verse, has varied his numbers in such a manner as makes them incapable of satiating the ear and cloying the reader, which the same uniform measure would certainly have done, and which the perpetual returns of rhyme never fail to do in long narrative poems. . . . . Had I thought, at my first engaging in this design, that it would have led me to so great a length, I believe I should never have entered upon it; but the kind reception which it has met with among those whose judgments I have a value for, as well as the uncommon demands which my bookseller tells me have been made for these particular discourses, give me no reason to repent of the pains I have been at in composing them."-Joseph Addison, The Spectator, Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 369, January 5 to May 3, 1712. See also Addison's "An Account of the Greatest English Poets," in English Poems, Vol. III, p. 65.

"He was certainly a man of prodigious parts, and wrote many books; but what did most and most justly distinguish him was his poetry, particularly his Paradise Lost, in which he manifested such a wonderful sublime genius as perhaps was never exceeded in any age or nation in the world."-Laurence Echard, The History of England, 1718.

Is not each great, each amiable Muse
Of classic ages in thy Milton met?
A genius universal as his theme,
Astonishing as chaos, as the bloom

Of blowing Eden fair, as heaven sublime.

-James Thomson, "Summer" (1727), II. 1567–71.

Verse without rhyme I never could endure,
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure.
To him as Nature when he ceased to see,
Milton's an universal blank to me.

-James Bramston, The Man of Taste, 1731.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GENERAL WORKS

HISTORY AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS. A Short History of the English People, by J. R. Green (London, 1874; Harper). Epochs of English History, ed. by M. Creighton (Longmans, 1876-81): The Tudors and the Reformation (1485-1603), by M. Creighton; The Age of Elizabeth, by M. Creighton; The Puritan Revolution (1603-88), by S. R. Gardiner. History of England (1529-88,) 12 vols., by J. A. Froude (Longmans, 1856-70). History of England (1603-42), 10 vols., by S. R. Gardiner (Longmans, 1863-82). History of the Great Civil War, 3 vols., by S. R. Gardiner (Longmans, 1886-91). The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1625-60), 6 vols., by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, ed. by W. D. Mackay (Oxford University Press, 1888); Characters and Episodes of the Great Rebellion, ed. by G. D. Boyle (Oxford University Press, 1889; selections from Clarendon's history). Social England, ed. by H. D. Traill, Vols. 3, 4 (Cassell, 1895; Putman). Old English Social Life as Told by the Parish Registers, by T. F. Thiselton-Dyer (Stock, 1898). Society in the Elizabethan Age, by H. Hall (Sonnenschein, 1888; 3d ed., rev. and enlarged). London in the Time of the Tudors, by Sir Walter Besant (Black, 1904). London in the Time of the Stuarts, by Sir Walter Besant (Black, 1903). Shakespere's London, by H. T. Stephenson (Holt, 1906). Six Centuries of Works and Wages, by J. E. Thorold Rogers (Sonnenschein, 1884; fourteenth to nineteenth century).

HISTORY OF LITERATURE. The Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller, Vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press, 1909; Putnam). Histoire de la littérature anglaise, by H. A. Taine, Vols. 1, 2 (Paris, 1863); translation by H. Van Laun, 1871 (Holt, 1896). English Literature, an Illustrated Record, by Richard Garnett and Edmund Gosse, Vols. 1, 2, 3 (Macmillan, 1901-4). A Literary History of the English People, by J. J. Jusserand, Vols. 1, 2 (Unwin, 1895, 1906; Putnam). Periods of European Literature, ed. by George Saintsbury (W. Blackwood; Scribner): The Earlier Renaissance, by George Saintsbury (1901); The Later Renaissance, by David Hannay (1898); The First Half of the Seventeenth Century, by H. J. C. Grierson (1906). History of English Poetry (1774-81), 4 vols., by Thomas Warton, ed. by W. C. Hazlitt (Reeves, 1871). A History of English Poetry, by W. J. Courthope, Vols. 2, 3 (Macmillan, 1897, 1903). A History of Elizabethan Literature, by George Saintsbury (Macmillan, 1887). Characteristics of English Poets from Chaucer to Shirley, by William Minto (W. Blackwood, 1874). Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, by H. Walker, Vol. 1 (MacLehose, 1893; Macmillan). A Literary History of Scotland, by J. H. Millar (Scribner, 1903; Unwin). Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature (Lippincott, 1902-4; new ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (Smith, 1885-1901; Macmillan). Encylopaedia Britannica (Black, 1875-89; ninth ed.). Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century as Reflected in Contemporary Literature, by E. P. Cheyney (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Philology and Literature, Vol. 4, 1895; Winston, selling agent). Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century, by Sidney Lee (The Renaissance of England) (Constable, 1904; Scribner). Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, by C. H. Herford (Cambridge University Press, 1886; Putnam). Platonism in English Poetry of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by J. S. Harrison (Columbia University Press, 1903; Macmillan, agent; Columbia University Studies in Comparative Literature series). Essay on English Pastoral Poetry, by Edmund Gosse (in Spenser Society ed. of Spenser, Vol. 3; see below, "Edmund Spenser, Editions"). Elizabethan Sonnets, by Sidney Lee