1. Of Education
  2. Areopagitica
  3. On Shakespeare
  4. Alma or the Progress of the Mind
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1 Answers

Option 4 : Alma or the Progress of the Mind

The correct answer is Alma, or the Progress of the Mind.

  •  Alma, or the Progress of the Mind, a philosophic comedy in verse, written by the late Restoration British poet and diplomat Matthew Prior. 
  • It came late in his career, first appearing in his Poems on Several Occasions (1718), a collection published by Jacob Tonson and John Barber with the support of influential patrons such as Lord Bathurst and Lord Harley (later second Earl of Oxford), as well as friends such as John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope.  
  • The poem was written during the two years of house arrest that Prior had to undergo on the orders of the Whig politician Robert Walpole, from 1715-1717. He received a sum of 4000 guineas for the publication of this volume, and also received a present of £4000 from Lord Harley. It was never reprinted in Prior's lifetime, apart from a derivative Dublin edition in 1719. Thus we understand that option (4) is the correct answer.

  • The tractate Of Education was published in 1644, first appearing anonymously as a single eight-page quarto sheet presented as a letter written in response to a request from the Puritan educational reformer Samuel Hartlib. It represents John Milton's most comprehensive statement on educational reform and gives voice to his views "concerning the best and noblest way of education". 
  • Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parlament of England is a 1644 prose polemic by the English poet John Milton opposing licensing and censorship.  Areopagitica is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression.
  • “On Shakespeare”, though composed in 1630, first appeared anonymously as one of the many additions in the Second Folio (1632) of Shakespeare’s plays. It was Milton’s first published poem in English. In the 16-line epigram Milton contends that no man-made monument is a suitable tribute to Shakespeare’s achievement. 
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