happy choice in marriage. The good man ought to have the same opportunity for making experiments, and it does not occur to him that the practice might be demoralising.
This example illustrates what, for want of a better name, must be called Milton's method of reasoning. He generalises from a single case, and that case his own. 'Logical Milton always was,' says Professor Raleigh; 'he learnt little or nothing from the political events of his time.' The 'logic' which rejects experience has a strong resemblance to the simpler process of dispensing with logic. Milton, no doubt, was, as Professor Raleigh calls him, 'an idealist, pure and simple,' and expected to realise the dream of setting up in England a republic on the old classical model. He may be so far compared to theorists of the Rousseau type, who went upon a priori principles and were equally scornful of appeals to experience. But the 'rights of man' doctrine admitted at least of being set forth as a coherent system of reasoning. Its first principles might be erroneous, but they led by logical process to its conclusion. Milton does not reason to his conclusions; he simply jumps at them. He feels intensely, and judges by his instincts. He does not formulate
