Estimate of his Prose.
HISTORICAL FACTS.
It is Charles Lamb who says "Milton almost requires a solemn service to be played before you enter upon him." Of Milton, the poet of _Paradise Lost_, this is true; but for Milton the statesman the politician, and polemic, this is neither necessary nor appropriate.

John Milton and the Commonwealth! Until the present age, Milton has been regarded almost solely as a poet, and as the greatest imaginative poet England has produced; but the translation and publication of his prose works have identified him with the political history of England, and the discovery in 1823, of his _Treatise on Christian Doctrine_, has established him as one of the greatest religious polemics in an age when every theological sect was closely allied to a political party, and thus rendered the strife of contending factions more bitter and relentless.

Thus it is that the name of John Milton, as an author, is fitly coupled with the commonwealth, as a political condition.
It remains for us to show that in all his works he was the strongest literary type of history in the age in which he lived.

Great as he would have been in any age, his greatness is mainly English and historical.

In his literary works may be traced every cardinal event in the history of that period: he aided in the establishment of the Commonwealth, and of that Commonwealth he was one of the principal characters.