This is what is meant by the standing charge
against Milton that he is too learned.
It is no paradox to say that Milton was not a learned man. Such men
there were in his day, Usher, Selden, Voss, in England; in Holland,
Milton's adversary Salmasius, and many more. A learned man was one
who could range freely and surely over the whole of classical and
patristic remains in the Greek and Latin languages (at least), with
the accumulated stores of philological, chronological, historical
criticism, necessary for the interpretation of those remains. Milton
had neither made these acquisitions, nor aimed at them. He even
expresses himself, in his vehement way, with contempt of them.
"Hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk," "marginal stuffings,"
"horse-loads of citations and fathers," are some of his petulant
outbursts against the learning that had been played upon his position
by his adversaries. He says expressly that he had "not read the
Councils, save here and there" (_Smectymnuus_). His own practice had
been "industrious and select reading." He chose to make himself a
scholar rather than a learned man.
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