all these upwhirled aloft Fly o'er the backside of the world far off, Into a limbo large and broad, since called The paradise of fools.
It was a setting forth of that spirit which, when the Cavaliers were many of them formalists, and the Puritans many of them fanatics, led to the rise of many sects, and caused rude soldiers to bellow their own riotous fancies from the pulpit.

In the suddenness of change, when the earthly throne had been destroyed, men misconceived what was due to the heavenly; the fancy which had been before curbed by an awe for authority, and was too ignorant to move without it, now revelled unrebuked among the mysteries which are not revealed to angelic vision, and thus "fools rushed in where angels fear to tread." The book could not fail to bring him immense fame, but personally he received very little for it in money--less than L20.
PARADISE REGAINED .-- It was Thomas Ellwood, Milton's Quaker friend, who, after reading the _Paradise Lost_, suggested the _Paradise Regained_.

This poem will bear no comparison with its great companion.

It may, without irreverence, be called "The gospel according to John Milton." Beauties it does contain; but the very foundation of it is false.

Milton makes man regain Paradise by the success of Christ in withstanding the Devil's temptations in the wilderness; a new presentation of his Arian theology, which is quite transcendental; whereas, in our opinion, the gate of Paradise was opened only "by His precious death and burial; His glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Ghost." But if it is immeasurably inferior in its conception and treatment, it is quite equal to the _Paradise Lost_ in its execution.
A few words as to Milton's vocabulary and style must close our notice of this greatest of English poets.