" This poem, he
believed, had merits far superior to those of "Paradise Lost,"
which he could not bear to hear praised in preference to
"Paradise Regained." In the same year he published "Samson
Agonistes," and two years later a treatise on "Logic," and
another on "True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the
Best Methods to Prevent the Growth of Popery." In this, the mind
which had soared to heaven and descended to hell in its boundless
flight, argues that catholics should not be allowed the right of
public or private worship. In the last year of his life he
republished his "Juvenile Poems," together with "Familiar
Epistles in Latin."
He had now reached his sixty-sixth year. His life had been
saddened by blindness, his health enfeebled by illness, his
domesticity troubled by his first marriage and his last, his
desires disappointed by the result of political events. So that
when, on the 10th of November, 1674, death summoned him, he
departed without regret.
Amongst those who visited Milton was John Dryden, whom the author
of "Paradise Lost" regarded as "a good rhymester, but no poet,"
an opinion with which posterity has not held. At the
restoration, John Dryden was in his twenty-ninth year. The son
of Sir Erasmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Ashby, he enjoyed an
income of two hundred pounds a year, a sum then considered
sufficient to defray the expenses of a young man of good
breeding. He had passed through Westminster School, taken a
degree at Cambridge, written a eulogistic stanza on the death of
Cromwell, and a joyous poem on the happy restoration of the merry
monarch.
Pages:
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439