Though Dryden tells us Milton confessed to him that Spenser was his "original," he has no connection--other than a general similarity of purpose, moral and religious--with Spenser's followers.

To the fantastics he paid in his youth the doubtful compliment of one or two half-contemptuous imitations and never touched them again.

He had no turn for the love lyrics or the courtliness of the school of Jonson.

In everything he did he was himself and his own master; he devised his own subjects and wrote his own style.

He stands alone and must be judged alone.
No author, however, can ever escape from the influences of his time, and, just as much as his lesser contemporaries, Milton has his place in literary history and derives from the great original impulse which set in motion all the enterprises of the century.