said, make 'verbal curiosity' his end, but would be 'an interpreter of the best and sagest things among his own citizens throughout this island in the mother dialect.' To keep Milton out of politics, that is, we should have had to emasculate him; and the emasculation would certainly have been fatal to the great poems. The modern 'stylist' is generally an 'interesting invalid,' with a voice too weak to be heard in the market-place. We may quite agree that we would not exchange Milton for a dozen invalids, interesting or otherwise. But is this really the dilemma? Must we choose between the 'invalid' and the savage pamphleteer? Was Milton, because a patriot, bound to be scurrilous? It is easy to recall the fierceness of the time: we may possibly admit with Professor Raleigh that the use of Latin is an apology for abuse, and that the English tracts, equally abusive, were written for people accustomed to controversy in Latin. But the argument from the 'standard of the time,' and the proof that at any given period that standard was exceptionally low, has become a trifle commonplace. Milton's abusiveness scandalised even his contemporaries, and their reproofs extorted from him a sufficiently lame apology. Some people could
