And sympathy for ideas is hard to find, just
in proportion as those ideas are profound, far-reaching, the fruit of
long study and meditation. Hence it was that Milton did not associate
readily with his contemporaries, but was affable and instructive in
conversation with young persons, and those who would approach him in
the attitude of disciples. His daughter Deborah, who could tell so
little about him, remembered that he was delightful company, the life
of a circle, and that he was so, through a flow of subjects, and
an unaffected cheerfulness and civility. I would interpret this
testimony, the authenticity of which is indisputable, of his demeanour
with the young, and those who were modest enough to wait upon his
utterances. His isolation from his coevals, and from those who offered
resistance, was the necessary consequence of his force of character,
and the moral tenacity which endured no encroachment on the narrow
scheme of thought; over which it was incessantly brooding.
Though, as Johnson says "his literature was immense", there was no
humanity in it; it was fitted immovably into a scholastic frame-work.
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