"they should not willingly let die." However inferior to the heroes
who were born in better ages, he might still be great among his
contemporaries, with the hope of growing every day greater in the
dwindle of posterity. He might still be the giant of the pigmies,
the one-eyed monarch of the blind.

Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we
have little account, and there was perhaps little to be told.
Richardson, who seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries,
but discovers always a wish to find Milton discriminated from other
men, relates that "he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but
not a verse could he make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty
would rush upon him with an impetus or aestrum, and his daughter was
immediately called to secure what came. At other times he would
dictate perhaps forty lines in a breath, and then reduce them to
half the number."

These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient
and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having
some appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are
eagerly caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this
inequality happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or
mental. The mechanic cannot handle his hammer and his file at all
times with equal dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when
HIS HAND IS OUT. By Mr. Richardson's relation, casually conveyed,
much regard cannot be claimed. That, in his intellectual hour,
Milton called for his daughter "to secure what came," may be
questioned; for unluckily it happens to be known that his daughters
were never taught to write; nor would he have been obliged, as it is
universally confessed, to have employed any casual visitor in