IN LITERATURE
believed was a righteous cause, and having seen that cause collapse, Milton could but agree with Sir Thomas Browne, that a man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
III
But the career of magic was not over. Milton rejected it, as Homer had done, as Scott did later, and many another individual here and there; but it is not for their rejection of magic that Homer or Milton or Scott has been widely praised. We have advanced far enough to ask that our talismans be of a less obvious kind than satisfied men a thousand years ago, but a talisman of some kind we still delight in. Witness three novelists, undeniably great, who are supposed to account for life genuinely and
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