ABSTRACT
T here are many who have wished that Milton were living at this hour, but not all have taken into account the fact that his great polemical writings demand an heroic kind of attention which modern education does not discipline the majority of our citizens to give. Even in the last century W. E. Channing was moved to lament “the fastidious ness and effeminacy of modern readers” when faced with Miltons prose writings. He went on to say, in a passage which may serve to introduce our topic, “To be universally intel ligible is not the highest merit. A great mind cannot, without injurious constraint, shrink itself to the grasp of common pas sive readers.” It is wrong therefore to expect it to sacrifice great qualities “that the multitude may keep pace with it.”1
