Excerpt from Little Masterpieces: John Milton, Selections, Chiefly Autobiographical, From the Pamphlets and Letters, With the Tractate on Education and Areopagitica

In one of the most memorable passages of Milton's prose writings, published at the very beginning of his activity as a pamphleteer, he makes a significant confession concerning his use of prose: "I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand." That other task to which the genial power of nature led him was the production of poetry, and a young man who had already written "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso, " "Lycidas" and "Comus, " might be pardoned for long hesitancy before turning to an alien instrument of expression. "But when God commands to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous or a jarring blast, it lies not in man's will what he shall say or what he shall conceal." So thought this most fastidious of English poets, when he bade farewell to the quiet ways and the serene hours devoted to the muse, and boldly entered the arena of political and theological controversy.

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