our poet,--that he makes God the Father a school divine--is just, we
must attribute it to the character of his age, from which the men of
genius, who escaped, escaped by a worse disease, the licentious
indifference of a Frenchified court.

Such was the 'nidus' or soil, which constituted, in the strict sense of
the word, the circumstances of Milton's mind. In his mind itself there
were purity and piety absolute; an imagination to which neither the past
nor the present were interesting, except as far as they called forth and
enlivened the great ideal, in which and for which he lived; a keen love
of truth, which, after many weary pursuits, found a harbour in a sublime
listening to the still voice in his own spirit, and as keen a love of
his country, which, after a disappointment still more depressive,
expanded and soared into a love of man as a probationer of immortality.
These were, these alone could be, the conditions under which such a work
as the Paradise Lost could be conceived and accomplished. By a life-long
study Milton had known--


What was of use to know,
What best to say could say, to do had done.
His actions to his words agreed, his words
To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart
Contain'd of good, wise, fair, the perfect shape;


and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest to the ages coming, in
the 'Paradise Lost'. [2]

Difficult as I shall find it to turn over these leaves without catching