25:22. Metellus, a distinguished Roman noble, was considered to have lived a life of the greatest possible felicity. Nero was one of the most sensual of the Roman emperors.

26: 3. Helluos: Gluttons.

JOHN MILTON (Page 27)

John Milton (1608-1674), the son of a London scrivener, was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, which he left in 1632. During the six following years, he resided at Horton, near Windsor, where he wrote many of his most beautiful poems: L'Allegro and Il Penseroso (1632), Arcades (1633), Comus (1634), and Lycidas (1637). After a brief period of foreign travel, he settled in London, where for twenty years he was engaged in vigorous controversies on ecclesiastical and political questions connected with the struggle between King and Parliament, in which Milton sided with Cromwell and his party. He published several prose pamphlets against Episcopacy, defended divorce, pleaded in the Areopagitica (1644) for the freedom of the press, and attempted to justify the execution of Charles I. In 1649 he was appointed Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth, the labors of which office led to his blindness. At the Restoration in 1660, his life was spared, and he began his great poem, Paradise Lost, which, completed in 1667, was followed by Paradise Regained (1671) and Samson Agonistes (1671), a tragedy on Greek models. He died in 1674.

In grandeur of style and harmony of versification Milton is at the head of English poets. His dignity, pride, and majesty of character seem to separate him from ordinary mortals, and inspire both reverence and awe.

An Apostrophe to Light (Page 27)

In this passage, taken from Paradise Lost, Milton, in pathetic fashion, refers to his own blindness, and gives utterance to the lofty ideal which he was constantly endeavoring to reach. Astonishing as it may seem, most of the poem was dictated by the poet to his wife and daughters; this fact probably accounts in part for the magnificent harmony and music of the blank verse in which it is written.

27:14. The Stygian pool is a reference to the earlier cantos of Paradise Lost, which had treated of Satan and his associates in Hell.

The Death of Samson (Page 29)

The theme of Samson Agonistes is the capture and death of Samson at the hands of the Philistines (see Judges, 13-16). For the particular passage given here, see Judges, 16: 21-30.

29:24. Cataphracts are horsemen covered with defensive armor.

30:34. The vulgar is the usage of the word in its original meaning from the Latin vulgus, a crowd.

A Poet's Ideal (Page 31)

The selection is from the Apology for Smectymnuus (1642), one of Milton's controversial pamphlets on church questions, and is, according to Masson, without excep

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tion, the profoundest thing that Milton has told us about himself." As autobiography, it is of exceptional interest, as explaining the poet's steady devotion to an ideal formed in his early youth.

32: 12. Bordelloes are homes of vice.

JOHN DRYDEN (Page 33)

John Dryden (1631-1700), a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and later a resident of London, began as a playwright in 1663 and became the most popular dramatist of his age. His literary reputation, however, rests rather on his satirical work, Absalom and Achitophel (1681); The Medal (1682); and MacFlecknoe (1682). In addition Dryden gained fame as a translator, as a controversialist in prose and verse, and as a lyrical poet. His style, in poetry as well as prose, is vigorous, clear, and concise. With little imaginative power, he had a keen and aggressive intellect and striking ability as a satirist.

The Character of the Earl of Shaftesbury (Page 33)

This description is taken from Absalom and Achitophel, a satirical poem based on the plot of the Duke of Monmouth, the illegitimate son of Charles II, against his father, and dealing with the participants under names taken from the Biblical story of Absalom's revolt against David (2 Samuel, 15-18). Shaftesbury, the evil adviser of Monmouth, is here portrayed as Achitophel.

34:3. Israel is, of course, England.

34:14. An Abbethdin was a Jewish officer of the high court of justice.

34 : 22. David is Charles II, the father of the Duke of Monmouth.

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (Page 34)

This elegy was written on the death of John Oldham (1653-1683), a cynical, but rugged and manly satirist of Dryden's time, who died in his early manhood.

35:2. Nisus. An allusion to the story of Nisus and Euryalus, in Virgil's Eneid, Book V.

35:17. Marcellus, the promising son of the emperor Augustus, excited the praise of Virgil in Book VI of the Eneid. Unfortunately he died while still a child.

DANIEL DEFOE (Page 36)

Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731) was a journalist, essayist, and novelist, who took a prominent but somewhat dubious part in the politics of his time, and gained enduring fame late in life by the publication of the immortal Robinson Crusoe (1719). He was master of a kind of graphic realism, which, aided by a clear and matter-of-fact style, makes even his fiction read like a transcript from actual life. The selection given here is from Robinson Crusoe, and describes the incident which ushered in the series of events leading to the acquisition of Crusoe's Man Friday, and the hero's eventual release from his lonely island prison.

JONATHAN SWIFT (Page 40)

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), possibly the most brilliant of English prose satirists, was an Irishman who became a clergyman of the Church of England and interested himself in the political intrigues of Queen Anne's reign. Disappointed in his ambitions the highest office he received was the Deanship of St. Patrick's in Dublin he retired to Ireland after the accession of George I, completely embittered man, and sank finally into a gloomy and savage misanthropy which ended in madness and death. The Tale of a Tub (1704) and Gulliver's Travels (1726) are probably Swift's best-known works; but his Journal to Stella, a strange record of self-revelation, and

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his Drapier Letters, besides other prose and verse of an ironical or satirical nature, are all full of strength and robustness in thought and style. The passage chosen here is from Gulliver's Travels, Part II, which deals with the hero's adventures among a race of Giants, the Brobdingnagians. Glumdalclitch is the servant who has been selected to act as attendant for Gulliver.

JOSEPH ADDISON (Page 43)

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Joseph Addison (1672-1719), gained some reputation as a statesman, and finally, in 1717, became Secretary of State under George I. He is better known, however, as an essayist, and particularly as editor, with Richard Steele, of The Spectator (1711-1712), a daily paper which exercised an extraordinary influence in refining the style of prose writing of the period, and in reforming the manners and morals" of a somewhat crude and corrupt age. Addison was a cold-blooded man, not always guiltless of selfishness; but he was a polished and admirable gentleman who earned a justly deserved popularity. His style is easy, graceful, and lucid, and his writings have a high place in English literature.

Hymn (Page 43)

While Addison was in no sense great as a poet, this Hymn has lived because of its impressive rotundity of style, almost worthy of Milton himself. It is usually sung to a noble melody from Handel's "Creation."