will not be weakened but strengthened by attack, is summarized in the
famous sentence, "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue."

Two interesting matters concerning _Areopagitica_ are: first, that
this eloquent plea for the freedom of printing had to be issued in defiance
of law, without a license; and second, that Milton was himself, a few years
later, under Cromwell's iron government, a censor of the press.

[Sidenote: THE SONNETS]

Milton's rare sonnets seem to belong to this middle period of strife,
though some of them were written earlier. Since Wyatt and Surrey had
brought the Italian sonnet to England this form of verse had been employed
to sing of love; but with Milton it became a heroic utterance, a trumpet
Wordsworth calls it, summoning men to virtue, to patriotism, to stern
action. The most personal of these sonnets are "On Having Arrived at the
Age of Twenty-three," "On his Blindness" and "To Cyriack Skinner"; the most
romantic is "To the Nightingale"; others that are especially noteworthy are
"On the Late Massacre," "On his Deceased Wife" [Footnote: This beautiful
sonnet was written to his second wife, not to Mary Powell.] and "To
Cromwell." The spirit of these sonnets, in contrast with those of
Elizabethan times, is finely expressed by Landor in the lines:

Few his words, but strong,
And sounding through all ages and all climes;
He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand
Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave the notes
To Glory.

MILTON'S LATER POETRY. [Footnote: The three poems of Milton's later life