Wert thou that just Maid who once before Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth, And cam'st again to visit us once more? Or wet thou that sweet smiling Youth? Or any other of the heavenly brood Let down in cloudy throne to do the world good? Or wert thou of the golden-winged host, Who, having clad thyself in human weed, To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post And after short abode fly back with speed As if to show what creatures heaven doth breed; Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire, To scorn the sorded world, and unto Heaven aspire? John Milton

His travels supplemented his study with new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions especially Roman Catholicism. Otherwise at Cambridge he developed a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition but experienced alienation from his peers and university life as a whole. His own corpus is not devoid of humour notably his sixth prolusion and his epitaphs on the death of Thomas Hobson.

). William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author" and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language" though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism). Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which.