The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-12
From the Providence Journal.

| @ HREE hundred years ago toaay (CD John Milton was born. mat
 his father was John Milton ana his mother Sarah Castor Milton are mat ters of slight moment So far as Wo can judge the accident of Miltons pareA'- age had little influence on the slae oi bis nowers that the whole English-speak- ing world is celebrating today. For 2oo wears after Milton's death his admirers and detraetors alike persisted in speak ing of his ethical standards, his contro- versial activities and his religious and nolitical views as if these aspects of his nersona1ity had a vital connection with his real greatness. We of today have learned better. We no longer attack him for. these reasons, like Johnson, or defend him-to Milton's very great nm drance-like Macaulay, and a host or other tractarians. We are content to let the side of him that belonged to John Milton, scrivener, disinherited by ms father for his acceptance of the reformed religion, and Sarah Milton, of virtuous and pious memory be forgotten All the eloquence of Miltons prose works cannot save them. All the sincerity of his po- litical service cannot change the fact that he made grave errors. In religion and in politics Milton was the son of his father and mother-a bigoted liberal, an intolerant reformer, a bitter and un- fair, sometimes a thoroughly mean-spirit- ed antagonist Poetically he was at once a man and a god.
 We are concerned today with Milton the poet We know nothing of the despicable attack on Moore if we think of such frailties at all it Is to remember
 "so little knows
 And, but God alone, to value right
 The good before him, but perverts best
 things
 To worst abuse, or to their meanest
 use"
 We can ignore the pretty and pitiful details of Miltons estrangement from Mary Powell-among which may be counted the pamphlet in favor of d. vorce-and think only of that beautiful and exquisitely human sonnet on his de- ceased wife, the second Wife, who seems alone of the three to have been the source of real happiness to the harrassed and possibly harassing poet We can we must believe that the man who wrote the sonnet on his blindness was the real Milton, strong to suffer, yet feeling the emotions of life keenly in his own way, capable of heights and depths to which the author of the Essay on the Doc trines of Christianity could never reach. Could cold hearted bigot have written
 
 iconoclast have composed the perfect music of the songs in "Arcades'? Mil ton too often hid the soul of an artist and the heart of @ man under the sour visaged mask of Puritan. But he was none the less a poet because he de- scended to the vulgarity of personal abuse, none the less a man because he was too often thwarted in his human as- pirations through circumstances for which he was in large part responsible.
 In that curious essay on Milton to which reference has already been made -one of the worst essays that he ever wrote-Macaulay devotes a measure of space to Milton the poet. In the course of the discussion of Miltons claims to be considered one of the greatest of poets Macaulay makes certain fine criticisms, oases of real thought amid a waste of special pleading. For the sake of these we almost forgive the snug complacency with which he well comes Milton into the whig fold. Macaulay approved Milton for his po- ltical views; but he did really love him for his poetry, else he could never nf hot incantation." No phrase could better describe the effect of all of Miltons longer poems. One may like Milton or not like him; but no one with an ear for poetry could possibly read a page of Paradise Lost without feel ing the magical influence of which Macaulay speaks. There is no English poet than whom Milton is less like in many other ways than Keats; in this he resembles him, It is true that Mill tons magic music is different in tim bre; but it reaches the same end It is the voice of the master magician. We may shake ourselves free of it's influence and feel no desire to return to it. but while we are within the <charmed circle it's power is inevitable, as little to be argued with as fate.
 It is difficult if not impossible to explain this power. Milton was never a juggler with words. At times he was capable of commonplaceness of Ian guage, even brusqueness, which might foreshadow Browning. Yet we accept his cheerful assurance, NO fear lest dinner cool" as a part of the de- scription. of the earthly paradise and feel no revulsion of feeling. Milton understood the power of cadence as no other English poet has ever understood it; and this supreme gift enabled him to invest that which would otherwise have been harsh and unlovely with