"
"I never saw Mr. Dante's comedy acted, and confess myself ignorant of its
merits."
"Comedy, sir, with Dante, is but a name. The Italian poem is an epic, and
not a play. Mr. Milton's poem will be given to the world shortly, though,
alas! he will reap little substantial reward for the intellectual labour
of years. Poetry is not a marketable commodity in England, save when it
flatters a royal patron, or takes the vulgarer form of a stage-play. But
this poem of Mr. Milton's has been the solace of his darkened life. You
have heard, perhaps, of his blindness?"
"Yes, he had to forego his office as Latin Secretary to that villain. To my
mind the decay of sight was a judgment upon him for having written against
his murdered King, even to the denial of his Majesty's own account of his
sufferings. But I confess that even if the man had been a loyal subject,
I have little admiration for that class; scribblers and pamphleteers,
brooders over books, crouchers in the chimney-corner, who have never
trailed a pike or slept under the open sky. And seeing this vast increase
of book-learning, and the arising of such men as Hobbes, to question our
religion--and Milton to assail monarchy--I can but believe those who
say that this old England has taken the downward bent; that, as we are
dwindling in stature, so we are decaying in courage and capacity for
action.
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