“Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with such blindness as Milton’s?”
“Those that do not care about his poetry, papa,” answered Constance, with a deprecatory smile.
“Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can’t love one you know nothing about.”
“I have tried to read him a little.”
“Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you had never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But you and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of what we had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?”
“Not the least, papa. You don’t mind what I said about Milton?”
“Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much if you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him was more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him.”
“O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him.”
“There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of appreciating him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen. You think of him as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry things. Now he is not dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry things. You have a figure before you in your fancy, which is dry, and which you call Milton. But it is no more Milton than your dull-faced Dutch doll, which you called after her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But here comes your mamma; and I haven’t said what I wanted to say yet.”
“But surely, husband, you can say it all the same,” said my wife. “I will go away if you can’t.”