In passage after passage in his prose works he begs for his reader's patience for a little while longer till his preparation be complete.
When the time came at last for beginning he was in no doubt; in his very opening lines he intends, he says, to soar no "middle flight." This self-assured unrelenting certainty of his, carried into his prose essays in argument, produces sometimes strange results.

One is peculiarly interesting to us now in view of current controversy.

He was unhappily married, and because he was unhappy the law of divorce must be changed.
A modern--George Eliot for instance--would have pleaded the artistic temperament and been content to remain outside the law.

Milton always argued from himself to mankind at large.
[Footnote 4: "Milton," E.M.L., and "Milton" (Edward Arnold).] In everything he did, he put forth all his strength.

Each of his poems, long or short, is by itself a perfect whole, wrought complete.