Also from his address on Milton I mentioned yesterday:
The most eloquent voice of our century uttered, shortly before leaving the world, a warning cry ‘against the Anglo-Saxon contagion.’ The tendencies and aims, the view of life and the social economy of the ever-multiplying and spreading Anglo-Saxon race, would be found congenial, this prophet feared, by all the prose, all the vulgarity amongst mankind, and would invade and overpower all nations. The true ideal would be lost, a general sterility of mind and heart would set in.
The prophet had in view, no doubt, in the warning thus given, us and our colonies, but the United States still more.
You would expect to hear that sort of things in colleges now, or thirty years ago.
This address was given in 1887. To dedicate a stained glass window to honor Milton’s second wife. Donated by an American.
Yeah, the whole address pretty much builds up Milton by damning the nineteenth century poets and non-Excellent, especially the Americans.
