In it he calls fame "that last infirmity of noble
mind." Perhaps he has nowhere written finer lines than these:
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed.
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
_Flames in the forehead of the morning sky_.
Besides these, Milton wrote Latin poems with great vigor, if not with
remarkable grace; and several Italian sonnets and poems, which have been
much admired even by Italian critics. The sonnet, if not of Italian
origin, had been naturalized there when its birth was forgotten; and this
practice in the Italian gave him that power to produce them in English
which he afterward used with such effect.
PARADISE LOST.--Having thus summarily disposed of his minor poems, each of
which would have immortalized any other man, we come to that upon which
his highest fame rests; which is familiarly known by men who have never
read the others, and who are ignorant of his prose works; which is used as
a parsing exercise in many schools, and which, as we have before hinted,
has furnished Protestant pulpits with pictorial theology from that day to
this.
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