'Servant of God, well done! Well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms,
And for the testimony of truth hast borne

Universal reproach, far worse to bear

Than violence; for this was all thy care

To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse.'

'O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies,
O skilled to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starred from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,
Tower as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches

Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.'

-TENNYSON.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

MILTON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

From A Defence of the English People

From Second Defence of the People of England .

To Charles Diodati (Elegia Prima)

To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters, No. III.)

To Thomas Young (Familiar Letters, No. IV.)

To Charles Diodati (Elegia Sexta)

Prolusiones quædam Oratoriæ

To Father (Ad Patrem)

.

40-43

42, 43

43-44

English letter to a friend (unknown) who, it appears, had

been calling him to account for his apparent indiffer-

ence as to his work in life

Sonnet: On his having arrived at the age of twenty-three

To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters, No. V.)

To Charles Diodati (Familiar Letters, Nos. VI., VII.).

To Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence (Familiar Letters,

No. VIII.)

From Mansus, Latin poem addressed to Manso, Marquis of

Villa

From Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed

printing

44-46

46

47

48, 49

To Lucas Holstenius in the Vatican at Rome (Familiar Let-

PAGES

To Carlo Dati, Nobleman of Florence (Familiar Letters,

No. X.)

82-84

Sonnet: On his Blindness

84, 85

To the most distinguished Leonard Philaras, of Athens, Am-

bassador from the Duke of Parma to the King of France

(Familiar Letters, No. XII.)

85, 86

To Henry Oldenburg, agent for the city of Bremen in Lower

Saxony with the Commonwealth (Familiar Letters, No.

XIV.)

87, 88

To Leonard Philaras, Athenian (Familiar Letters, No. XV.)

Sonnet: To Cyriac Skinner.

88-90

91

Sonnet: On his deceased wife

91

To the most accomplished Emeric Bigot (Familiar Letters,

No. XXI.)

92

To Henry Oldenburg (Familiar Letters, No. XXIX.) .

From Considerations touching the Likeliest Means to remove

Hirelings out of the Church (August, 1659) .

Autobiographic passages in the Paradise Lost

93

94-96

96-102

To the very distinguished Peter Heimbach, Councillor to the

Elector of Brandenburg (Familiar Letters, No. XXXI.) 102, 103

Passages in Milton's prose and poetical works in which his idea

of true liberty, individual, domestic, civil, political, and re-

ligious, is explicitly set forth.

104-125