The poet of revealed religion under its Puritanic type. Paradise Lost is the epic of a fallen cause, the embodiment of Puritan England -- its grand ambitions, its colossal energies, its strenuous struggles, its broken hope, its proud and sombre horizon. It has the distinguishing merit and signal defect of the Puritan temper, -- the equable realization of a great purpose, and the painful want of a large, genial humanity.

The last of the Elizabethans; holding his place on he borders of the Renaissance, which was setting, and of the Doctrinal Age, which was rising; between the epoch of natural belief, of unbiased fancy, and the epoch of severe religion, of narrow opinions; displaying, under limitations, the old creativeness in new subjects; concentrating the literary past and future; and when his proper era had passed by, looming in solitary greatness at a moment when imagination was extinct and taste was depraved.

By the purity of his sentiments and the sustained fulness of his style, he holds affinity with Spenser, who calmly dreams; by his theme and majesty, with Dante, who is fervid and rapt; by his profundity and learning, with Bacon, who is more comprehensive; by his inspiration, with Shakespeare, who is freer and more varied, but in sublimity he excels them all, even Homer. The first two books of Paradise Lost are continued instances of the sublime. Its height is what distinguishes the entire poem from every other. Its central figure, the ruined arch-angel, is the most tremendous conception in the compass of poetry ...

'He who should aspire to write well in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; ... not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy.'

Not art, but life, was the end of his effort, -- to identify himself and others with all holy and select images ...  The mind thus consecrated to moral beauty, is stamped with the superscription of the Most High. Like the Puritans, his eye was fixed continually on an Almighty Judge. This was the light that irradiated his darkness ... This was the idea, strengthened by vast knowledge and solitary meditation, that absorbed all the rest of his being, and made him the sublimest of men. Hence the poems that rise like temples, and the rhythms that flow like organ chants. Hence the contempt of external circumstances, the purpose that will not bend to opposition nor yield to seduction, the courage to perform a perilous duty and to combat for what is true or sacred. Hence the calm, conscious energy which no subject, howsoever vast or terrific, can repel or intimidate, which no emotion or accident can transform or disturb, which no suffering can render sullen or fretful. Hence the larger conception of perpetual growth, the consequent reverence for human nature, hatred of the institutions which fetter the mind, devotion to freedom -- above all, freedom of speech, of conscience and worship ...

Naturally, his habits of living were austere. He was an early riser, and abstemious in diet. The lyrist, he thought, might indulge in wine, and in a freer life; but he who would write an epic to the nations, must eat beans and drink water. His amusements consisted in gardening, in exercise with the sword, and in playing the organ. Music, he insisted, should form part of a generous education. His ear for it was acute; and his voice, it is said, was sweet and harmonious ... The simplicity of his later years accorded with his inner greatness. He listened every morning to a chapter from the Hebrew Bible; and, after meditating in silence on what he had heard, studied till mid-day; then, after an hours exercise, he attuned himself to majesty and purity of thought with music, and resumed his studies till six ...

An Independent in politics and religion, a hero, a martyr, a recluse, a dweller in an ideal city, standing alone and aloof above his times, and, when eyes of flesh were sightless, wandering the more 'where the Muses haunt.' -- truly --