John Bright on John Milton

“Paradise Regained—the work of a poet unsurpassed in any country or in any age, and a poem which I believe great authorities admit, if Paradise Lost did not exist, would be the finest in our language.”

“Now, more than thirty years ago, when I was very young indeed, in my beginning to think about public affairs, in reading the pure writings of John Milton, I found a passage which fixed itself in my mind. This passage time has never been able to take from my memory. He says, "Yet true eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of truth." And I have endeavoured, so far as I have had the opportunity of speaking in public, to abide by that wise and weighty saying.”