It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of