From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There
prevailed in his time an opinion, that the world was in its decay,
and that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the
decrepitude of nature. It was suspected that the whole creation
languished, that neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of
their predecessors, and that everything was daily sinking by gradual
diminution. Milton appears to suspect that souls partake of the
general degeneracy, and is not without some fear that his book is to
be written in "an age too late" for heroic poesy.

Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds
reception among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations
of the mind to particular regions, and supposes that a luckless
mortal may be born in a degree of latitude too high or too low for
wisdom or for wit. From this fancy, wild as it is, he had not
wholly cleared his head, when he feared lest the CLIMATE of his
country might be TOO COLD for flights of imagination.

Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another, not more
reasonable, might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his
genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate,
might consistently magnify to himself the influence of the seasons,
and believe his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.

His submission to the seasons was at least more reasonable than his
dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must
operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less
could be performed by the writer, less likewise would content the
judges of his work. Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he
might still have risen into eminence by producing something which