SOURCE: "Of Shakespeare and Milton," in Lectures on the English Poets, Humphrey Milford and Oxford University Press, 1924, pp. 85-103.

In the following excerpt, Hazlitt provides an overview of Milton's religious sensibilities, his political commitments, and his literary influences from Biblical and Classical writings.

… Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand just warm from the touch of the ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its character into his imagination; so that he devotes himself with the same sense of duty to the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or the good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the prophet, vied with each other in his...