Milton
would essay a better system. All he had ever executed was Russia,
taking the pains to turn over and extract for his purpose all the best
travels in that country. This is the fragment which figures in his
Works as a _Brief History of Moscovia_.
The hackneyed metaphor of Pegasus harnessed to a luggage trolley,
will recur to us when we think of the author of _L'Allegro_, setting
himself to compile a Latin lexicon. If there is any literary drudgery
more mechanical than another, it is generally supposed to be that of
making a dictionary. Nor had he taken to this industry as a resource
in age, when the genial flow of invention had dried up, and original
composition had ceased to be in his power. The three folio volumes of
MS. which Milton left were the work of his youth; it was a work which
the loss of eyesight of necessity put an end to. It is not Milton
only, but all students who read with an alert mind, reading to grow,
and not to remember, who have felt the want of an occupation which
shall fill those hours when mental vigilance is impossible, and
vacuity unendurable. Index-making or cataloguing has been the resource
of many in such hours.
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