AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MILTON
Reading edition
Comprising all the Autobiographic Passages in his Works, the more Explicit Presentations of his Ideas of True Liberty
COMUS, LYCIDAS, and SAMSON AGONISTES
With Notes and Forewords
BY
HIRAM CORSON, LL.D.
Professor of English Literature in the Cornell University
NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1899
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1899, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
'Servant of God, well done! Well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintained Against revolted multitudes the cause Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, And for the testimony of truth hast borne Universal reproach, far worse to bear Than violence; for this was all thy care— To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds Judged thee perverse.'
—Paradise Lost, VI. 29-37.
'O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, O skilled to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starred from Jehovah's gorgeous armories, Tower as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset— Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods Whisper in odorous heights of even.'
—Tennyson.