such as Plato enacted for his ideal State, but none but Milton ever
had the courage to practise, the biographer would gladly give a minute
account. But the means of doing so are wanting. The poet kept no diary
of his reading, such as some great students, e.g. Isaac Casaubon, have
left. Nor could such a record, had it been attempted, have shown us
the secret process by which the scholar's dead learning was transmuted
in Milton's mind into living imagery. "Many studious and contemplative
years, altogether spent in the search of religious and civil
knowledge" is his own description of the period. "You make many
inquiries as to what I am about;" he writes to Diodati--"what am I
thinking of? Why, with God's help, of immortality! Forgive the word, I
only whisper it in your ear! Yes, I am pluming my wings for a flight."
This was in 1637, at the end of five years of the Horton probation.
The poems, which, rightly read, are strewn with autobiographical
hints, are not silent as to the intention of this period. In _Paradise
Regained_ (i. 196), Milton reveals himself. And in _Comus_, written
at Horton, the lines 375 and following are charged with the same
sentiment,--

And wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,
Where, with her best nurse, contemplations
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all-to ruffled and sometimes impair'd.

That at Horton Milton "read all the Greek and Latin writers" is one of
Johnson's careless versions of Milton's own words, "enjoyed a complete
holiday in turning over Latin and Greek authors." Milton read, not as
a professional philologian, but as a poet and scholar, and always in