The Miltonic controversy as to Mr. Morley's newly found "
Epitaph " has raged all the week, and brought out Lord Win- chelsca again, who on Tuesday made quite a personal matter of it, and was as savage, supercilious, and cynical as if his honour were in question. Ile hits wildly in all directions, but makes very little play. The criticism which has shaken us most gravely as to the Miltonic authorship of the epitaph is a very modest but very testing one, signed "S. M. P.", in the 2"imes of Tuesday, which notes that the word "its" occurs four times in the epitaph, though it had barely come into use at all in Milton's time,—the old form " his " being then in use,—occurring only three times in Shakespeare, not at all in the authorized translation of the Bible, and not at all, he believes, in Milton's other works. That strikes us as an argument against its Miltonic authorship worth all Lord Winchelsea's diffuse, fussy, and discourteous commentaries put together.
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