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CHISWICK PRESS:-CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

Prefatory Note.

In illustrating the shorter poems of Milton the maker of these designs has naturally chosen those subjects that most appealed to him. In interpretation and execution he has striven to keep to what he conceives to be the Miltonic spirit, and has aimed generally at avoiding incident as likely to obscure that intention. For the same reason he has dispensed with abundance of merely decorative detail; the marked sanity and severity of Milton's writing seeming to be incompatible with the elaborate and often intricate design so much in vogue at the present day, whereby the poetic feeling in decoration is in danger of degenerating into a commonplace formalism.

In Milton's work there is a rare combination of graceful scholarship and classic method with the high and severe ethical ideals of the Puritan, which is perhaps hardly expressible in the medium of the draughtsman's art; and if he has leant rather to the severer side and the more solemn aspect of the poet's work, it is in the belief that this aspect is the one which presents itself to the great mass of his readers. The charm of Milton is chiefly of an intellectual kind,

appealing to the thinker and the scholar, and in the eyes of such the designer would hope that his work, deficient though it may be in accessory graces, will not be found out of sympathy with the spirit of the poet.

October, 1898.

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