"
Before the piety of this vow, Dr. Johnson's morosity yields for a
moment, and he is forced to exclaim, "From a promise like this, at
once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the _Paradise
Lost_."
Of these years of self-cultivation, of conscious moral architecture,
such as Plato enacted for his ideal State, but none but Milton ever
had the courage to practise, the biographer would gladly give a minute
account. But the means of doing so are wanting. The poet kept no diary
of his reading, such as some great students, e.g. Isaac Casaubon, have
left. Nor could such a record, had it been attempted, have shown us
the secret process by which the scholar's dead learning was transmuted
in Milton's mind into living imagery. "Many studious and contemplative
years, altogether spent in the search of religious and civil
knowledge" is his own description of the period. "You make many
inquiries as to what I am about;" he writes to Diodati--"what am I
thinking of? Why, with God's help, of immortality! Forgive the word, I
only whisper it in your ear! Yes, I am pluming my wings for a flight."
This was in 1637, at the end of five years of the Horton probation.
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