of imagination, delicate accuracy and suggestiveness of language, and harmony of versification, he is unrivalled, and almost unapproached; and when the difficulties inherent in the subject of his great masterpiece are considered, the power he shows in dealing with them appears almost miraculous, and we feel that in those parts where he has failed, success was impossible for a mortal.  In his use of blank verse he has, for majesty, variety, and music, never been approached by any of his successors.  He had no dramatic power and no humour.  In everything he wrote, a proud and commanding genius manifests itself, and he is one of those writers who inspire reverence rather than affection.  His personal appearance in early life has been thus described, “He was a little under middle height, slender, but erect, vigorous, and agile, with light brown hair clustering about his fair and oval face, with dark grey eyes.”

SUMMARY.—­B. 1608, ed. at St. Paul’s School and Camb., and while at the latter wrote earlier poems including The Nativity and Sonnets, lived for 6 years at Horton and wrote L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas, travelled in France and Italy 1638, settled in London, entered on his political and controversial labours, and wrote inter alia on Reform of Discipline 1641, Divorce 1643-45, Education 1644, Areopagitica 1644, and the two Defences 1650 and 1654, appointed Latin Sec. 1649, this period closed by Restoration 1660, Paradise Lost written 1658-64, pub. 1667, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes 1671, d. 1674, m. first 1643 Mary Powell, second 1652 Katharine Woodcock, third 1663 Eliz.  Minshull, who survived till 1727.

Life by Prof.  Masson (6 vols. 1859-80), also short Lives by M. Patteson (1880), Garnett (1889).  Ed. of Works by Boydell, Sir E. Brydges, and Prof.  Masson.

MINOT, LAURENCE (1300?-1352?).—­Poet.  Nothing is certainly known of him.  He may have been a soldier.  He celebrates in northern English and with a somewhat ferocious patriotism the victories of Edward III. over the Scots and the French.

MINTO, WILLIAM (1845-1893).—­Critic and biographer, b. at Alford, Aberdeenshire, and ed. at Aberdeen and Oxf., went to London, and became ed. of the Examiner, and also wrote for the Daily News and the Pall Mall Gazette.  In 1880 he was appointed Prof. of Logic and Literature at Aberdeen.  He wrote a Manual of English Prose Literature (1873), Characteristics of the English Poets (1874), and a Life of Defoe for the Men of Letters Series.