Note 166 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
In Milton's work we see plainly the progressive influence of the Puritan Age. Thus his Horton poems are joyous, almost Elizabethan in character; his prose is stern, militant, unyielding, like the Puritan in his struggle for liberty; his later poetry, following the apparent failure of Puritanism in the Restoration, has a note of sadness, yet proclaims the eternal principles of liberty and justice for which he had lived.