JOHN MILTON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13938, 21 December 1908, Page 3

JOHN MILTON.

Sir,—lf it be an accepted truth that, as \ Wordsworth has finely said, 1 We must be free or die. who speak the tongrxe ] That Sliakespere spoke; the faith and morals i hold * , Which Milton held, ( then, as residents of a country where all ! the liberties and privileges for which t.ho ' latter poet so nobly fought and suffered nearly 300 years ago, are enjoyed as in- { alienable rights, wo should be intensely J interested in the tor-centenary celebrations i now being held in his honour. , John Milton had a strangely composite and complex character. His is one of the 1 most interesting cases of dual personality ! on record, yet the double nature of the ! man is easily traced. As a poet, he is little •' short of the perfect artist; majestic and ' lofty to a degree unparalleled in our litera- c ture, yet. sensitive to all musical expression c of thought, and sweet with the true instinct of Nature. As the prose-writer, the author of fierce but eloquent political pamphlets, he: reveals the partisan, the patriot, the passionate champion of liberty in all its < forms. ( ' 4 Ho was a man who had splendid control i of both his. objective and his subjective 1 consciousness (to use a modern term). This t is shown by the fact that he deliberately i laid down the poet's pen for 20 years, in c order to engage in a strenuous political and 3 religious controversy; and when he had con- t eluded this, " defending all that needed

defence," as Samuel Johnson says, and losing his sight, by heroic choice aforethought, in the process, he took up again the long-deferred task of writing the epic that was to become immortal. In that poem he relates how to his amanuenses he dictated "nightly by unpremeditated verse," proving that he* had possession of " tho golden key to. ope the palace of eternity," a fact of which we might have been assured from the eversublime and ethereal quality of all his wonderful poetry. This was a veritable modern . Prometheus, self-appointed to the arduous task of bringing the heavenly fire down from the abode of the gods to the weary earth. If by emphasising some of the extraordinary merits of such a man as thi3, any interest is aroused in the hearts of the young men of our day for his life and works, (his letter will not have been written in vain. W. A. KEXDON.