19 DECEMBER 1903, Page 3

We are glad to note that Mr. Sidney Lee and

Mr. Churton Collins, letters from whom appeared in the Times during the course of the past week, are endeavouring to awaken publie opinion in regard to the purchase of the MS. of Milton's "Paradise Lost," which, it is stated, will be put up to auction in London this spring. It would be a subject for deep regret if so interesting a memorial of the great Puritan poet were to be removed from this country. Milton was essentially a Londoner, and the MS. of the poem, written in London, which Dr. Johnson called "not the greatest of epic poems only because it was not the first," ought surely to be preserved here.