Milton's Prose [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION It was not by any free choice that Milton gave himself to the composition of his voluminous prose works. When he realized that ' sad occasion dear' had left him no alternative, it was with a sense of bittér disappointment and anger that he turnéd his back on the elaborate preparations which he was making for his life-work, at the very moment when buds and blossoms were promising a full harvest. He hated the prospect of brawling controversy and he was conseious of no special fitness to engage in it, Moreover, he had never doubted what his real work in life should be. Already in his boyhood he was dreaming of immortality, as he confessed in a letter to his school friend, Diodati. In his college exercises and earliest originál compositions, his friends had perceived that 4 the style, by certain vitai signs it had, was likely to live,' and in Milton there grew the perfect assurance that God had raised him up to be a great poet. The eight years at Cambridge, followed by six years of intense study at his father's country-house, had all one only aim-to prepare him for his great task. It was not the kind of preparation that sufficed the ignorant poetasters who were his contemporaries. He was a dedicated spirit, and but an instrument of 4 that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and puriíy the lips of whom he pleases.' His preparation must be both intellectual and morál. 4 Industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemfy and generous arts and affairs' would make him acquainted with his material. On the other hand he must alsó vn