Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books. com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: will not be very hard to communicate that appreciation along with the rest of the teaching, which deals all the time with facts. Is there not pleasure, to take an example, in the imagining with L'Allegro all the country people as they tell their old-time stories of goblins and fairies and will-o'-the- wisps? Is it not inspiring to think with II Penseroso of the noble splendor of Greek tragedy, of the quaint romance of Chaucer, of the mystic legends of Spenser? Is not clear-eyed Faith a noble figure? Is there not a singular gravity and beauty in the beginning of Lycidas ? Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Certainly there are many things of like nature with these, and things like these both in detail and in general are the things that really make the poem. All the rest was but to enable us to get these things; all the study about words and constructions and allusions had no other end than to enable us to get at this poetry. The teacher will be sure not to make the mistake of getting the students to do all the hard work without getting any of the fun afterward. We shall not get the true enjoyment without knowledge, but to spend all our time on knowing a poem merely is like running a mile to the station and missing the train. EXAMINATION QUESTIONS The following examination questions will be found to be fairly representative. Just how many should be given on any examination would depend largely upon the time allowed. 1. How far is L'Allegro representative of Milton's disposition ? 2. How did Milton come to write Comus ? 3. Who is celebrated in Lycidas, and what was Milton's connection . . .