John Milton
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 18 August 1833; in Table Talk (1884) 250.
In the Paradise Lost — indeed in every one of his poems — it is Milton himself whom you see; his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve — all are John Milton; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that gives me the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's works. The egotism of such a man is a revelation of spirit.