" The disgusting profanation of the
leaden coffin, and dispersion of the poet's bones by the parochial
authorities, during the repair of the church in August, 1790, has been
denied, but it is to be feared the fact is too true.
CHAPTER XIII.
PARADISE LOST--PARADISE REGAINED--SAMSON AGONISTES
"Many men of forty," it has been said, "are dead poets;" and it might
seem that Milton, Latin secretary, and party pamphleteer, had died to
poetry about the fatal age. In 1645, when he made a gathering of his
early pieces for the volume published by Humphry Moseley, he wanted
three years of forty. That volume contained, besides other things,
_Comus_, _Lycidas_, _L'Allegro_, and _Il Penseroso_; then, when
produced, as they remain to this day, the finest flower of English
poesy. But, though thus like a wary husbandman, garnering his sheaves
in presence of the threatening storm, Milton had no intention of
bidding farewell to poetry. On the contrary, he regarded this volume
only as first-fruits, an earnest of greater things to come.
The ruling idea of Milton's life, and the key to his mental history,
is his resolve to produce a great poem.
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