On the Detraction which followed upon my Writing Certain Treatises
OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM WHICH IS CALLED TRAGEDY
A Defence of the People of England
The Second Defence of the People of England
To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters , No. III.)
To Thomas Young. (Familiar Letters , No. IV.)
To Charles Diodati, making a Stay in the Country
To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters , No. V.)
To Charles Diodati. (Familiar Letters , No. VI.)
To Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence. (Familiar Letters , No. VIII.)
To Lucas Holstenius. (Familiar Letters , No. IX.)
Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence, etc.
The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty
To Carlo Dati. (Familiar Letters , No. X.)
To Leonard Philaras. (Familiar Letters , No. XII.)
To Henry Oldenburg. (Familiar Letters , No. XIV.)
To Leonard Philaras. (Familiar Letters , No. XV.)
To Emeric Bigot. (Familiar Letters , No. XXI.)
Autobiographic passages in the Paradise Lost
Letter to Peter Heimbach. (Familiar Letters , No. XXXI.)
Passages in which Milton's Idea of True Liberty is Set Forth
INTRODUCTION
Milton's prose works are perhaps not read, at the present day, to the extent demanded by their great and varied merits, among which may be named their uncompromising advocacy of whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report; their eloquent assertion of the inalienable rights of men to a wholesome exercise of their intellectual faculties, the right to determine for themselves, with all the aids they can command, what is truth and what is error; the right freely to communicate their honest thoughts from one to another—rights which constitute the only sure and lasting foundation of individual, civil, political, and religious liberty; the ever-conscious sentiment which they exhibit, on the part of the poet, of an entire dependence upon 'that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases'; the ever-present consciousness they exhibit of that stewardship which
