SELECTIONS FROM
THE PROSE AND POETRY

OF JOHN MILTON

EDITED BY

JAMES HOLLY HANFORD, PH.D.
Professor of English at the University of Michigan

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO

The Riverside Press Cambridge

10-29-1923

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTORY SELECTIONS: ILLUSTRATING MILTON'S

LIFE, PERSONALITY, AND PRINCIPLES

FROM THE LATIN POEMS AND THE FAMILIAR LETTERS

Elegy I

To Alexander Gill

Elegy VI

To a Friend i

To His Father

To Charles Diodati

The Epitaph of Damon

To Peter Heimbach,

FROM THE PROSE WORKS

The Reason of Church Government-

An Apology for Smectymnuus

Areopagitica

The Second Defence of the English People

SELECTIONS FROM THE MINOR POEMS, PARADISE

REGAINED, AND SAMSON AGONISTES

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

45

On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three 54 v

L'Allegro

54

'Il Penseroso

Comus

• Lycidas

To the Lord General Cromwell

102

To Sir Henry Vane the Younger

103

On the Late Massacre in Piemont

103 ~

On His Blindness

104

33

96