Milton's Tercentenary

It is a poetry book. There is nothing more bracing in English poetry than those passages in the sonnets, in Paradise Lost and in Samson Agonistes where Milton speaks of his blindness. Yet here it is observable that Milton, who is never sentimental, is also never pathetic but when he speaks of him- self, in such lines, e.g., as Samson's Cowley was the true pedant : his erudition was crabbed and encum- bered the free movement of his mind, while Milton made his the grace and ornament of his verse.