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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8770-8.txt b/8770-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..64a165c --- /dev/null +++ b/8770-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6676 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton, by Mark Pattison + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Milton + +Author: Mark Pattison + +Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8770] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on August 11, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldorondo, Tiffany Vergon, Marc D'Hooghe and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + +MILTON + +by + +MARK PATTISON, B.D. + +RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +FIRST PERIOD. 1608-1639. + +CHAPTER I. FAMILY--SCHOOL--COLLEGE + +CHAPTER II. RESIDENCE AT HORTON--L'ALLEGRO--IL PENSEROSO--AUCADES + --COMUS--LYCIDAS + +CHAPTER III. JOURNEY TO ITALY + + +SECOND PERIOD. 1640-1660. + +CHAPTER IV. EDUCATIONAL THEORY--TEACHING + +CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE AND PAMPHLET ON DIVORCE + +CHAPTER VI. PAMPHLETS + +CHAPTER VII. BIOGRAPHICAL. 1640-1649 + +CHAPTER VIII THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP + +CHAPTER IX. MILTON AND MORUS--BLINDNESS + +CHAPTER X. MILTON AND MOSES--THE SECOND DEFENSE--THE DEFENSE FOR + HIMSELF + +CHAPTER XI. LATIN SECRETARYSHIP COMES TO AN END--MILTON'S FRIENDS + + +THIRD PERIOD. 1660--1674 + +CHAPTER XII. BIOGRAPHICAL--LITERARY OCCUPATION--RELIGIOUS OPINIONS + +CHAPTER XIII.PARADISE LOST--PARADISE REGAINED--SAMSON AGONISTES + + +INDEX + + + + +MILTON. + + + + +_FIRST PERIOD_. 1608-1639. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +FAMILY--SCHOOL--COLLEGE. + + +In the seventeenth century it was not the custom to publish two +volumes upon every man or woman whose name had appeared on a +title-page. Nor, where lives of authors were written, were they +written with the redundancy of particulars which is now allowed. +Especially are the lives of the poets and dramatists obscure and +meagrely recorded. Of Milton, however, we know more personal details +than of any man of letters of that age. Edward Phillips, the poet's +nephew, who was brought up by his uncle, and lived in habits of +intercourse with him to the last, wrote a life, brief, inexact, +superficial, but valuable from the nearness of the writer to the +subject of his memoir. A cotemporary of Milton, John Aubrey (b.1625), +"a very honest man, and accurate in his accounts of matters of fact," +as Toland says of him, made it his business to learn all he could +about Milton's habits. Aubrey was himself acquainted with Milton, and +diligently catechised thepoet's widow, his brother, and his nephew, +scrupulously writing down each detail as it came to him, in the +minutee of lives which he supplied to Antony Wood to be worked up in +his _Athenae_ and _Fasti_. Aubrey was only an antiquarian collector, +and was mainly dependent on what could be learned from the family. +None of Milton's family, and least of all Edward Phillips, were of a +capacity to apprehend moral or mental qualities, and they could only +tell Aubrey of his goings out and his comings in, of the clothes +he wore, the dates of events, the names of his acquaintance. In +compensation for the want of observation on the part of his own kith +and kin, Milton himself, with a superb and ingenuous egotism, +has revealed the secret of his thoughts and feelings in numerous +autobiographical passages of his prose writings. From what he directly +communicates, and from what he unconsciously betrays, we obtain an +internal life of the mind, more ample than that external life of the +bodily machine, which we owe to Aubrey and Phillips. + +In our own generation all that printed books or written documents +have preserved about Milton has been laboriously brought together by +Professor David Masson, in whose _Life of Milton_ we have the most +exhaustive biography that ever was compiled of any Englishman. It is a +noble and final monument erected to the poet's memory, two centuries +after his death. My excuse for attempting to write of Milton alter Mr. +Masson is that his life is in six volumes octavo, with a total of some +four to five thousand pages. The present outline is written for a +different class of readers, those, namely, who cannot afford to know +more of Milton than can be told in some two hundred and fifty pages. + +A family of Miltons, deriving the name in all probability from the +parish of Great Milton near Thame, is found in various branches spread +over Oxfordshire and the adjoining counties in the reign of Elisabeth. +The poet's grandfather was a substantial yeoman, living at Stanton St. +John, about five miles from Oxford, within the forest of Shotover, of +which he was also an under-ranger. The ranger's son John was at school +in Oxford, possibly as a chorister, conformed to the Established +Church, and was in consequence cast off by his father, who adhered +to the old faith. The disinherited son went up to London, and by +the assistance of a friend was set up in business as a scrivener. A +scrivener discharged some of the functions which, at the present day, +are undertaken for us in a solicitor's office. John Milton the father, +being a man of probity and force of character, was soon on the way to +acquire "a plentiful fortune." But he continued to live over his shop, +which was in Bread Street, Cheapside, and which bore the sign of the +Spread Eagle, the family crest. + +It was at the Spread Eagle that his eldest son, John Milton, was +born, 9th December, 1608, being thus exactly contemporary with Lord +Clarendon, who also died in the same year as the poet. Milton must be +added to the long roll of our poets who have been natives of the +city which now never sees sunlight or blue sky, along with Chaucer, +Spenser, Herrick, Cowley, Shirley, Ben Jonson, Pope, Gray, Keats. +Besides attending as a day-scholar at St. Paul's School, which was +close at hand, his father engaged for him a private tutor at home. The +household of the Spread Eagle not only enjoyed civic prosperity, but +some share of that liberal cultivation, which, if not imbibed in the +home, neither school nor college ever confers. The scrivener was not +only an amateur in music, but a composer, whose tunes, songs, and airs +found their way into the best collections of music. Both schoolmaster +and tutor were men of mark. The high master of St. Paul's at that time +was Alexander Gill, an M.A. of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who was +"esteemed to have such an excellent way of training up youth, that +none in his time went beyond it." The private tutor was Thomas Young, +who was, or had been, curate to Mr. Gataker, of Rotherhithe, itself +a certificate of merit, even if we had not the pupil's emphatic +testimony of gratitude. Milton's fourth elegy is addressed to Young, +when, in 1627, he was settled at Hamburg, crediting him with having +first infused into his pupil a taste for classic literature and +poetry. Biographers have derived Milton's Presbyterianism in 1641 from +the lessons twenty years before of this Thomas Young, a Scotchman, +and one of the authors of the _Smectymnuus_. This, however, is a +misreading of Milton's mind--a mind which was an organic whole--"whose +seed was in itself," self-determined; not one whose opinions can be +accounted for by contagion or casual impact. + +Of Milton's boyish exercises two have bean preserved. They are English +paraphrases of two of the Davidic Psalms, and were done at the age of +fifteen. That they were thought by himself worth printing in the same +volume with _Comus_, is the most noteworthy thing about them. No words +are so commonplace but that they can be made to yield inference by a +biographer. And even in these school exercises we think we can discern +that the future poet was already a diligent reader of Sylvester's _Du +Bartas_ (1605), the patriarch of Protestant poetry, and of Fairfax's +_Tasso_ (1600). There are other indications that, from very early +years, poetry had assumed a place in Milton's mind, not merely as a +juvenile pastime, but as an occupation of serious import. + +Young Gill, son of the high master, a school-fellow of Milton, went +up to Trinity, Oxford, where he got into trouble by being informed +against by Chillingworth, who reported incautious political speeches +of Gill to his godfather, Laud. With Gill Milton corresponded; they +exchanged their verses, Greek, Latin, and English, with a confession +on Milton's part that he prefers English and Latin composition to +Greek; that to write Greek verses in this age is to sing to the deaf. +Gill, Milton finds "a severe critic of poetry, however disposed to be +lenient to his friend's attempts." + +If Milton's genius did not announce itself in his paraphrases of +Psalms, it did in his impetuosity in learning, "which I seized with +such eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age, I scarce ever +went to bed before midnight." Such is his own account. And it +is worthnotice that we have here an incidental test of the +trustworthiness of Aubrey's reminiscences. Aubrey's words are, "When +he was very young he studied very hard, and sate up very late, +commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night; and his father ordered +the maid to sit up for him." + +He was ready for college at sixteen, not earlier than the usual age +at that period. As his schoolmasters, both the Gills, were Oxford men +(Young was of St. Andrew's), it might have been expected that the +young scholar would have been placed at Oxford. However, it was +determined that he should go to Cambridge, where he was admitted a +pensioner of Christ's, 12th February, 1625, and commenced residence in +the Easter term ensuing. Perhaps his father feared the growing High +Church, or, as it was then called, Arminianism, of his own university. +It so happened, however, that the tutor to whom the young Milton was +consigned was specially noted for Arminian proclivities. This was +William Chappell, then Fellow of Christ's, who so recommended himself +to Laud by his party zeal, that he was advanced to be Provost of +Dublin and Bishop of Cork. + +Milton was one of those pupils who are more likely to react against +a tutor than to take a ply from him. A preaching divine--Chappell +composed a treatise on the art of preaching--a narrow ecclesiastic of +the type loved by Land, was exactly the man who would drive Milton +into opposition. But the tutor of the seventeenth century was not +able, like the easy-going tutor of the eighteenth, to leave the young +rebel to pursue the reading of his choice in his own chamber. Chappell +endeavoured to drive his pupil along the scholastic highway of +exercises. Milton, returning to Cambridge after his summer vacation, +eager for the acquisition of wisdom, complains that he "was dragged +from his studies, and compelled to employ himself in composing +some frivolous declamation!" Indocile, as he confesses himself +(indocilisque aetas prava magistra fuit), he kicked against either the +discipline or the exercises exacted by college rules. He was punished. +Aubrey had heard that he was flogged, a thing not impossible in +itself, as the _Admonition Book_ of Emanuel gives an instance of +corporal chastisement as late as 1667. Aubrey's statement, however, is +a dubitative interlineation in his MS., and Milton's age, seventeen, +as well as the silence of his later detractors, who raked up +everything which could be told to his disadvantage, concur to make us +hesitate to accept a fact on so slender evidence. Anyhow, Milton was +sent away from college for a time, in the year 1627, in consequence +of something unpleasant which had occurred. That it was something of +which he was not ashamed is clear, from his alluding to it himself in +the lines written at the time,-- + + Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri + Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. + +And that the tutor was not considered to have been wholly free from +blame is evident from the fact that the master transferred Milton from +Chappell to another tutor, a very unusual proceeding. Whatever the +nature of the punishment, it was not what is known as rustication; for +Milton did not lose a term, taking his two degrees of B.A. and M.A. in +regular course, at the earliest date from his matriculation permitted +by the statutes. The one outbreak of juvenile petulance and +indiscipline over, Milton's force of character and unusual attainments +acquired him the esteem of his seniors. The nickname of "the lady +of Christ's" given him in derision by his fellow-students, is an +attestation of virtuous conduct. Ten years later, in 1642, Milton +takes an opportunity to "acknowledge publicly, with all grateful +mind, that more than ordinary respect which I found, above many of my +equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows +of that college wherein I spent some years; who, at my parting after I +had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much +better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters +full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long +after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me." + +The words "how much better it would content them that I would stay" +have been thought to hint at the offer of a fellowship at Christ's. It +is highly improvable that such an offer was ever made. There had been +two vacancies in the roll of fellows since Milton had become eligible +by taking his B.A. degree, and he had been passed over in favour of +juniors. It is possible that Milton was not statutably eligible, for, +by the statutes of Christ's, there could not be, at one time, more +than two fellows who were natives of the same county. Edward King, who +was Milton's junior, was put in, not by college election, but by +royal mandate. And in universities generally, it is not literature or +general acquirements which recommend a candidate for endowed posts, +but technical skill in the prescribed exercises, and a pedagogic +intention. + +Further than this, had a fellowship in his college been attainable, it +would not have had much attraction for Milton. A fellowship implied +two things, residence in college, with teaching, and orders in the +church. With neither of these two conditions was Milton prepared to +comply. In 1632, when he proceeded to his M.A. degree, Milton was +twenty-four, he had been seven years in college, and had therefore +sufficient experience what college life was like. He who was so +impatient of the "turba legentum prava" in the Bodleian library, could +not have patiently consorted with the vulgar-minded and illiterate +ecclesiastics, who peopled the colleges of that day. Even Mede, though +the author of _Clavis Apocalyptica_ was steeped in the soulless +clericalism of his age, could not support his brother-fellows without +frequent retirements to Balsham, "being not willing to be joined +with such company." To be dependent upon Bainbrigge's (the Master of +Christ's) good pleasure for a supply of pupils; to have to live in +daily intercourse with the Powers and the Chappells, such as we know +them from Mede's letters, was an existence to which only the want +of daily bread could have driven Milton. Happily his father's +circumstances were not such as to make a fellowship pecuniarily an +object to the son. If he longed for "the studious cloister's pale," +he had been, now for seven years, near enough to college life to +have dispelled the dream that it was a life of lettered leisure and +philosophic retirement. It was just about Milton's time that the +college tutor finally supplanted the university professor, a system +which implied the substitution of excercises performed by the pupil +for instruction given by the teacher. Whatever advantages this system +brought with it, it brought inevitably the degradation of the teacher, +who was thus dispensed from knowledge, having only to attend to +form. The time of the college tutor was engrossed by the details of +scholastic superintendence, and the frivolous worry of academical +business. Admissions, matriculations, disputations, declamations, the +formalities of degrees, public reception of royal and noble visitors, +filled every hour of his day, and left no time, even if he had had the +taste, for private study. To teaching, as we shall see, Milton was +far from averse. But then it must be teaching as he understood it, a +teaching which should expand the intellect and raise the character, +not dexterity in playing with the verbal formulae of the disputations +of the schools. + +Such an occupation could have no attractions for one who was even now +meditating _Il Penseroso_ (composed 1633). At twenty he had already +confided to his schoolfellow, the younger Gill, the secret of his +discontent with the Cambridge tone. "Here among us," he writes from +college, "are barely one or two who do not flutter off, all unfledged, +into theology, having gotten of philology or of philosophy scarce so +much as a smattering. And for theology they are content with just what +is enough to enable them to patch up a paltry sermon." He retained the +same feeling towards his Alma Mater in 1641, when he wrote (Reason of +Church Government), "Cambridge, which as in the time of her better +health, and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so now +much less...." + +On a review of all these indications of feeling, I should conclude +that Milton never had serious thoughts of a college fellowship, and +that his antipathy arose from a sense of his own incompatibility of +temper with academic life, and was not, like Phineas Fletcher's, the +result of disappointed hopes, and a sense of injury for having been +refused a fellowship at King's. One consideration which remains to be +mentioned would alone be decisive in favour of this view. A fellowship +required orders. Milton had been intended for the church, and had been +sent to college with that view. By the time he left Cambridge, at +twenty-four, it had become clear, both to himself and his family, that +he could never submit his understanding to the trammels of church +formularies. His later mind, about 1641, is expressed by himself +in his own forcible style,--"The church, to whose service by the +intention of my parents and friends I was destined of a child, and +in mine own resolutions, till coming to some maturity of years, and +perceiving what tyranny had invaded in the church, that he who would +take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal.... I +thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred +office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." +When he took leave of the university, in 1632, he had perhaps not +developed this distinct antipathy to the establishment. For in a +letter, preserved in Trinity College, and written in the winter of +1631-32, he does not put forward any conscientious objections to the +clerical profession, but only apologises to the friend to whom the +letter is addressed, for delay in making choice of some profession. +The delay itself sprung from an unconscious distaste. In a mind of +the consistent texture of Milton's, motives are secretly influential +before they emerge in consciousness. We shall not be wrong in +asserting that when he left Cambridge in 1632, it was already +impossible, in the nature of things, that he should have taken orders +in the Church of England, or a fellowship of which orders were a +condition. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +RESIDENCE AT HORTON--L'ALLEGRO--IL PENSEROSO--ARCADES--COMUS--LYCIDAS. + + +Milton had been sent to college to quality for a profession. The +church, the first intended, he had gradually discovered to be +incompatible. Of the law, either his father's branch, or some other, +he seems to have entertained a thought, but to have speedily dismissed +it. So at the age of twenty-four he returned to his father's house, +bringing nothing with him but his education and a silent purpose. The +elder Milton had now retired from business, with sufficient means but +not with wealth. Though John was the eldest son, there were two other +children, a brother, Christopher, and a sister, Anne. To have no +profession, even a nominal one, to be above trade and below the status +of squire or yeoman, and to come home with the avowed object of +leading an idle life, was conduct which required justification. Milton +felt it to be so. In a letter addressed, in 1632, to some senior +friend at Cambridge, name unknown, he thanks him for being "a good +watchman to admonish that the hours of the night pass on, for so I +call my life as yet obscure and unserviceable to mankind, and that the +day with me is at hand, wherein Christ commands all to labour." Milton +has no misgivings. He knows that what he is doing with himself is the +best he can do. His aim is far above bread-winning, and therefore his +probation must be long. He destines for himself no indolent tarrying +in the garden of Armida. His is a "mind made and set wholly on the +accomplishment of greatest things." He knows that the looker-on will +hardly accept his apology for "being late," that it is in order to +being "more fit." Yet it is the only apology he can offer. And he is +dissatisfied with his own progress. "I am something suspicious of +myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me." + +Of this frame of mind the record is the second sonnet, lines which are +an inseparable part of Milton's biography-- + + How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, + Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! + My hasting days fly on with full career, + But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. + Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth + That I to manhood am arrived so near, + And inward ripeness doth much less appear, + That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th. + Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, + It shall be still in strictest measure even + To that same lot, however mean or high, + Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. + All is, if I have grace to use it so, + As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye. + +With aspirations thus vast, though unformed, with "amplitude of mind +to greatest deeds," Milton retired to his father's house in the +country. Five more years of self-education, added to the seven years +of academical residence, were not too much for the meditation of +projects such as Milton was already conceiving. Years many more than +twelve, filled with great events and distracting interests, were to +pass over before the body and shape of _Paradise Lost_ was given to +these imaginings. + +The country retirement in which the elder Milton had fixed himself was +the little village of Horton, situated in that southernmost angle of +the county of Buckingham, which insinuates itself between Berks and +Middlesex. Though London was only about seventeen miles distant, it +was the London of Charles I., with its population of some 300,000 +only; before coaches and macadamised roads; while the Colne, which +flows through the village, was still a river, and not the kennel of a +paper-mill. There was no lack of water and woods meadow and pasture, +closes and open field, with the regal towers of Windsor--"bosom'd high +in tufted trees," to crown the landscape. Unbroken leisure, solitude, +tranquillity of mind, surrounded by the thickets and woods, which +Pliny thought indispensable to poetical meditation (Epist.9.10), no +poet's career was ever commenced under more favourable auspices. The +youth of Milton stands in strong contrast with the misery, turmoil, +chance medley, struggle with poverty, or abandonment to dissipation, +which blighted the early years of so many of our men of letters. + +Milton's life is a drama in three acts. The first discovers him in +the calm and peaceful retirement of Horton, of which _L'Allegro_, _Il +Penseroso_, and _Lycidas_ are the expression. In the second act he +is breathing the foul and heated atmosphere of party passion and +religious hate, generating the lurid fires which glare in the +battailous canticles of his prose pamphlets. The three great poems, +_Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_, are the +utterance of his final period of solitary and Promethean grandeur, +when, blind, destitute, friendless, he testified of righteousness, +temperance, and judgment to come, alone before a fallen world. + +In this delicious retirement of Horton, in alternate communing with +nature and with books, for five years of persevering study he laid in +a stock, not of learning, but of what is far above learning, of wide +and accurate knowledge. Of the man whose profession is learning, it +is characteristic that knowledge is its own end, and research its own +reward. To Milton all knowledge, all life, virtue itself, was already +only a means to a further end. He will know only "that which is of use +to know," and by useful, he meant that which conduced to form him for +his vocation of poet. + +From a very early period Milton had taken poetry to be his vocation, +in the most solemn and earnest mood. The idea of this devotion was the +shaping idea of his life. It was, indeed, a bent of nature, with roots +drawing from deeper strata of character than any act of reasoned will, +which kept him out of the professions, and now fixed him, a seeming +idler, but really hard at work, in his father's house at Horton. The +intimation which he had given of his purpose in the sonnet above +quoted had become, in 1641, "an inward prompting which grows daily +upon me, that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my +portion in this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, +I might perhaps leave something so written to after times, as they +should not willingly let it die." + +What the ultimate form of his poetic utterance shall be, he is in no +hurry to decide. He will be "long choosing," and quite content to be +"beginning late." All his care at present is to qualify himself +for the lofty function to which he aspires. No lawyer, physician, +statesman, ever laboured to fit himself for his profession harder +than Milton strove to qualify himself for his vocation of poet. +Verse-making is, to the wits, a game of ingenuity; to Milton, it is +a prophetic office, towards which the will of heaven leads him. The +creation he contemplates will not flow from him as the stanzas of the +_Gerusalemme_ did from Tasso at twenty-one. Before he can make a poem, +Milton will make himself. "I was confirmed in this opinion, that he +who would not be frustrated of his hope to write well hereafter in +laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.... not presuming to +sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have +in himself the experience and practise of all that which is +praiseworthy." + +Of the spontaneity, the abandon, which are supposed to be +characteristic of the poetical nature, there is nothing here; all +is moral purpose, precision, self-dedication. So he acquires ail +knowledge, not for knowledge' sake, from the instinct of learning, the +necessity for completeness, but because he is to be a poet. Nor will +he only have knowledge, he will have wisdom; moral development shall +go hand in hand with intellectual. A poet's soul should "contain of +good, wise, just, the perfect shape." He will cherish continually a +pure mind in a pure body. "I argued to myself that, if unchastity in +a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and +dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of +God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflouring +and dishonourable." There is yet a third constituent of the poetical +nature; to knowledge and to virtue must be added religion. For it is +from God that the poet's thoughts come. "This is not to be obtained +but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all +utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed +fire of his altar, to touch and purify the life of whom he pleases. To +this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, +and insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs; till which +in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sustain this expectation." +Before the piety of this vow, Dr. Johnson's morosity yields for a +moment, and he is forced to exclaim, "From a promise like this, at +once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the _Paradise +Lost_." + +Of these years of self-cultivation, of conscious moral architecture, +such as Plato enacted for his ideal State, but none but Milton ever +had the courage to practise, the biographer would gladly give a minute +account. But the means of doing so are wanting. The poet kept no diary +of his reading, such as some great students, e.g. Isaac Casaubon, have +left. Nor could such a record, had it been attempted, have shown us +the secret process by which the scholar's dead learning was transmuted +in Milton's mind into living imagery. "Many studious and contemplative +years, altogether spent in the search of religious and civil +knowledge" is his own description of the period. "You make many +inquiries as to what I am about;" he writes to Diodati--"what am I +thinking of? Why, with God's help, of immortality! Forgive the word, I +only whisper it in your ear! Yes, I am pluming my wings for a flight." +This was in 1637, at the end of five years of the Horton probation. +The poems, which, rightly read, are strewn with autobiographical +hints, are not silent as to the intention of this period. In _Paradise +Regained_ (i. 196), Milton reveals himself. And in _Comus_, written +at Horton, the lines 375 and following are charged with the same +sentiment,-- + + And wisdom's self + Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, + Where, with her best nurse, contemplations + She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, + That in the various bustle of resort + Were all-to ruffled and sometimes impair'd. + +That at Horton Milton "read all the Greek and Latin writers" is one of +Johnson's careless versions of Milton's own words, "enjoyed a complete +holiday in turning over Latin and Greek authors." Milton read, not as +a professional philologian, but as a poet and scholar, and always in +the light of his secret purpose. It was not in his way to sit down to +read over all the Greek and Latin writers, as Casaubon or Salmasius +might do. Milton read with selection, and "meditated," says Aubrey, +what he read. His practice conformed to the principle he has himself +laid down in the often-quoted lines (_Paradise Regained_, iv. 322)-- + + Who reads + Incessantly, and to his reading brings not + A spirit and judgment equal or superior, + Uncertain and unsettled still remains, + Deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself. + +Some of Milton's Greek books have been traced; his _Arattis, +Lyeophron, Euripides_ (the Stepharnis of 1602), and his _Pindar_ (the +Benedictus of 1620), are still extant, with marginal memoranda, which +should seem to evince careful and discerning reading. One critic +even thought it worth while to accuse Joshua Barnes of silently +appropriating conjectural emendations from Milton's _Euripides_. But +Milton's own poems are the beat evidence of his familiarity with all +that is most choice in the remains of classic poetry. Though the +commentators are accused of often, seeing an imitation where there +is none, no commentary can point out the ever-present infusion of +classical flavour, which bespeaks intimate converse far more than +direct adaptation. Milton's classical allusions, says Hartley +Coleridge, are amalgamated and consubstantiated with his native +thought. + +A commonplace book of Milton's, after having lurked unsuspected for +200 years in the archives of Netherby, has been disinterred in our +own day (1874). It appears to belong partly to the end of the Horton +period. It is not by any means an account of all that he is reading, +but only an arrangement, under certain heads, or places of memoranda +for future use. These notes are extracted from about eighty different +authors, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English. Of Greek authors +no less than sixteen are quoted. The notes are mostly notes of +historical facts, seldom of thoughts, never of mere verbal expression. +There is no trace in it of any intention to store up either the +imagery or the language of poetry. It may be that such notes were +made and entered in another volume; for the book thus accidentally +preserved to us seems to refer to other similar volumes of +collections. But it is more likely that no such poetical memoranda +were ever made, and that Milton trusted entirely to memory for the +wealth of classical allusion with which his verse is surcharged. He +did not extract from the poets and the great writers whom he was +daily turning over, but only from the inferior authors and secondary +historians, which he read only once. Most of the material collected +in the commonplace book is used in his prose pamphlets. But when so +employed the facts are worked into the texture of his argument, rather +than cited as extraneous witnesses. + +In reading history it was his aim to get at a conspectus of the +general current of affairs rather than to study minutely a special +period. He tells Diodati in September, 1637, that he has studied +Greek history continuously, from the beginning to the fall of +Constantinople. When he tells the same friend that he has been long +involved in the obscurity of the early middle ages of Italian History +down to the time of the Emperor Rudolph, we learn from the commonplace +book that he had only been reading the one volume of Sigonius's +_Historia Regni Italici_. From the thirteenth century downwards he +proposes to himself to study each Italian state in some separate +history. Even before his journey to Italy he read Italian with as much +ease as French. He tells us that it was by his father's advice that he +had acquired these modern languages. But we can, see that they were +essential parts of his own scheme of self-education, which included, +in another direction, Hebrew, both Biblical and Rabbinical and even +Syriac. + +The intensity of his nature showed itself in his method of study. He +read, not desultorily, a bit here and another there, but "when I take +up with a thing, I never pause or break it off, nor am drawn away from +it by any other interest, till I have arrived at the goal I proposed +to myself," He made breaks occasionally In this routine of study by +visits to London, to see friends, to buy books, to take lessons in +mathematics, to go to the theatre, or to concerts. A love of music was +inherited from his father. + +I have called this period, 1632-39, one of preparation, and not of +production. But though the first volume of poems printed by Milton did +not appear till 1645, the most considerable part of its contents was +written during the period included in the present chapter. + +The fame of the author of _Paradise Lost_ has overshadowed that of the +author of _L'Allegro, Il Penseroso,_ and _Lycidas_. Yet had _Paradise +Lost_ never been written, these three poems, with _Comus_, would have +sufficed to place their author in a class apart, and above all those +who had used the English language for poetical purposes before him. It +is incumbent on Milton's biographer to relate the circumstances of the +composition of _Comus_, as it is an incident in the life of the poet. + +Milton's musical tastes had brought him the acquaintance of Henry +Lawes, at that time the most celebrated composer in England. When the +Earl of Bridgewater would give an entertainment at Ludlow Castle to +celebrate his entry upon his office as President of Wales and the +Marches, it was to Lawes that application was made to furnish the +music. Lawes, as naturally, applied to his young poetical acquaintance +Milton, to write the words. The entertainment was to be of that +sort which was fashionable at court, and was called a Mask. In that +brilliant period of court life which was inaugurated by Elisabeth and +put an end to by the Civil War, a Mask was a frequent and favourite +amusement. It was an exhibition in which pageantry and music +predominated, but in which dialogue was introduced as accompaniment or +explanation. + +The dramatic Mask of the sixteenth century has been traced by the +antiquaries as far back as the time of Edward III. But in its +perfected shape it was a genuine offspring of the English renaissance, +a cross between the vernacular mummery, or mystery-play, and the Greek +drama. No great court festival was considered complete without such a +public show. Many of our great dramatic writers, Beaumont, Fletcher, +Ben Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, Shirley, Carew, were constrained by the +fashion of the time to apply their invention to gratify this taste for +decorative representation. No less an artist than Inigo Jones must +occasionally stoop to construct the machinery. + +The taste for grotesque pageant in the open air must have gradually +died out before the general advance of refinement. The Mask by a +process of evolution would have become the Opera. But it often happens +that when a taste or fashion is at the point of death, it undergoes a +forced and temporary revival. So it was with the Mask. In 1633, +the Puritan hatred to the theatre had blazed out in Prynne's +_Histriomastix_, and as a natural consequence, the loyal and cavalier +portion of society threw itself into dramatic amusements of every +kind. It was an unreal revival of the Mask, stimulated by political +passion, in the wane of genuine taste for the fantastic and +semi-barbarous pageant, in which the former age had delighted. What +the imagination of the spectators was no longer equal to, was to +be supplied by costliness of dress and scenery. Those last +representations of the expiring Mask were the occasions of an +extravagant outlay. The Inns of Court and Whitehall vied with each +other in the splendour and solemnity with which they brought out,--the +Lawyers, Shirley's _Triumph of Peace_,--the Court, Carew's _Coelum +Britannicum_. + +It was a strange caprice of fortune that made the future poet of the +Puritan epic the last composer of a cavalier mask. The slight plot, or +story, of _Comus_ was probably suggested to Milton by his recollection +of George Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_, which he may have seen on the +stage. The personage of _Comus_ was borrowed from a Latin extravaganza +by a Dutch professor, whose _Comus_ was reprinted at Oxford in +1634, the very year in which Milton wrote his _Mask_. The so-called +tradition collected by Oldys, of the young Egertons, who acted in +_Comus_, having lost themselves in Haywood Forest on their way to +Ludlow, obviously grew out of Milton's poem. However casual the +suggestion, or unpromising the occasion, Milton worked out of it a +strain of poetry such as had never been heard in England before. If +any reader wishes to realise the immense step upon what had gone +before him, which was now made by a young man of twenty-seven, he +should turn over some of the most celebrated of the masks of the +Jacobean period. + +We have no information how _Comus_ was received when represented at +Ludlow, but it found a public of readers. For Lawes, who had the MS. +in his hands, was so importuned for copies that, in 1637, he caused an +edition to be printed off. Not surreptitiously; for though Lawes does +not say, in the dedication to Lord Brackley, that he had the author's +leave to print, we are sure that he had it, only from the motto. On +the title page of this edition (1637), is the line,-- + + Eheu! quid volui miscro mihi! floribus anstrum + Perditus-- + +The words are Virgil's, but the appropriation of them, and their +application in this "second intention" is too exquisite to have been +made by any but Milton.To the poems of the Horton period belong also +the two pieces _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and _Lycidas_. He was +probably in the early stage of acquiring the language, when he +superscribed the two first poems with their Italian titles. For there +is no such word as "Penseroso," the adjective formed from "Pensiero" +being "pensieroso". Even had the word been written correctly, its +signification is not that which Milton intended, viz. thoughtful, or +contemplative, but anxious, full of cares, carking. The rapid +purification of Milton's taste will be best perceived by comparing +_L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ of uncertain date, but written after +1632, with the _Ode on the Nativity_, written 1629. The Ode, notwith- +standing its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigid conceits, +from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty, as written +in winter, within the four walls of a college chamber. The two idylls +breathe the free air of spring and summer, and of the fields round +Horton. They are thoroughly naturalistic; the choicest expression our +language has yet found of the fresh charm of country life, not as that +life is lived by the peasant, but as it is felt by a young and lettered +student, issuing at early dawn, or at sunset, into the fields from his +chamber and his books. All rural sights and sounds and smells are here +blended in that ineffable combination, which once or twice perhaps in +our lives has saluted our young senses before their perceptions were +blunted by + + alcohol, by lust, or ambition, or diluted by the social + distractions of great cities. + + The fidelity to nature of the imagery of these poems + has been impugned by the critics. + + Then to come, in spite of sorrow, + And at my window bid good morrow. + +The skylark never approaches human habitations in this way, as the +redbreast does, Mr. Masson replies that the subject of the verb "to +come" is, not the skylark, but L'Allegro, the joyous student. I cannot +construe the lines as Mr. Masson does, even though the consequence +were to convict Milton, a city-bred youth, of not knowing a skylark +from a sparrow when he saw it. A close observer of things around us +would not speak of the eglantine as twisted, of the cowslip as wan, +of the violet as glowing, or of the reed as balmy. Lycidas' laureate +hearse is to be strewn at once with primrose and woodbine, daffodil +and jasmine. When we read "the rathe primrose that forsaken dies," we +see that the poet is recollecting Shakespeare (Winter's Tale, 4. 4), +not looking at the primrose. The pine is not "rooted deep as high" +(_P.R._ 4416), but sends its roots along the surface. The elm, one of +the thinnest foliaged trees of the forest, is inappropriately named +starproof (_Arc_. 89). Lightning does not singe the tops of trees +(_P.L._ i. 613), but either shivers them, or cuts a groove down the +stem to the ground. These and other such like inaccuracies must be set +down partly to conventional language used without meaning, the vice +of Latin versification enforced as a task, but they are partly due to +real defect of natural knowledge. + +Other objections of the critics on the same score, which may be met +with, are easily dismissed. The objector, who can discover no reason +why the oak should be styled "monumental," meets with his match in +the defender who suggests, that it may be rightly so called because +monuments in churches are made of oak. I should tremble to have to +offer an explanation to critics of Milton so acute as these two. But +of less ingenious readers I would ask, if any single word can be found +equal to "monumental" in its power of suggesting to the imagination +the historic oak of park or chase, up to the knees in fern, which has +outlasted ten generations of men; has been the mute witness of the +scenes of love, treachery, or violence enacted in the baronial hall +which it shadows and protects; and has been so associated with man, +that it is now rather a column and memorial obelisk than a tree of the +forest? + +These are the humours of criticism. But, apart from these, a +naturalist is at once aware that Milton had neither the eye nor the +ear of a naturalist. At no time, even before his loss of sight, was he +an exact observer of natural objects. It may be that he knew a +skylark from a redbreast, and did not confound the dog-rose with the +honeysuckle. But I am sure that he had never acquired that interest in +nature's things and ways, which leads to close and loving watching +of them. He had not that sense of outdoor nature, empirical and not +scientific, which endows the _Angler_ of his cotemporary Walton, with +its enduring charm, and which is to be acquired only by living in the +open country in childhood. Milton is not a man of the fields, but of +books. His life is in his study, and when he steps abroad into the air +he carries his study thoughts with him. He does look at nature, but he +sees her through books. Natural impressions are received from without, +but always in those forms of beautiful speech, in which the poets of +all ages have clothed them. His epithets are not, like the epithets of +the school of Dryden and Pope, culled from the _Gradus ad Parnassum_; +they are expressive of some reality, but it is of a real emotion in +the spectator's soul, not of any quality detected by keen insight +in the objects themselves. This emotion Milton's art stamps with an +epithet, which shall convey the added charm of classical reminiscence. +When, e.g., he speaks of "the wand'ring moon," the original +significance of the epithet comes home to the scholarly reader with +the enhanced effect of its association with the "errantem lunam" of +Virgil. Nor because it is adopted from Virgil has the epithet here the +second-hand effect of a copy. If Milton sees nature through books, he +still sees it. + + To behold the wand'ring moon, + Riding near her highest noon, + Like one that had been led astray. + Through the heaven's wide pathless way, + And oft, as if her head she bow'd, + Stooping through a fleecy cloud. + +No allegation that "wand'ring moon" is borrowed from Horace can hide +from us that Milton, though he remembered Horace, had watched the +phenomenon with a feeling so intense that he projected his own soul's +throb into the object before him, and named it with what Thomson calls +"recollected love". + +Milton's attitude towards nature is not that of a scientific +naturalist, nor even that of a close observer. It is that of a poet +who feels its total influence too powerfully to dissect it. If, as I +have said, Milton reads books first and nature afterwards, it is not +to test nature by his books, but to learn from both. He is learning +not books, but from books. All he reads, sees, hears, is to him but +nutriment for the soul. He is making himself. Man is to him the +highest object; nature is subordinate to man, not only in its more +vulgar uses, but as an excitant of fine emotion. He is not concerned +to register the facts and phenomena of nature, but to convey the +impressions they make on a sensitive soul. The external forms of +things are to be presented to us as transformed through the heart and +mind of the poet. The moon is endowed with life and will, "stooping", +"riding", "wand'ring", "bowing her head", not as a frigid +personification, and because the ancient poets so personified her, but +by communication to her of the intense agitation which the nocturnal +spectacle rouses in the poet's own breast. + +I have sometimes read that these two idylls are "masterpieces of +description". Other critics will ask if in the scenery of _L'Allegro_ +and _Il Penseroso_ Milton has described the country about Horton, in +Bucks, or that about Forest Hill, in Oxfordshire; and will object that +the Chiltern Hills are not high enough for clouds to rest upon their +top, much less upon their breast. But he has left out the pollard +willows, says another censor, and the lines of pollard willow are the +prominent feature in the valley of the Colne, even more so than the +"hedgerow elms." Does the line "Walk the studious cloister's pale," +_mean_ St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey? When these things can continue +to be asked, it is hardly superfluous to continue to repeat, that +truth of fact and poetical truth are two different things. Milton's +attitude towards nature is not that of a "descriptive poet", if indeed +the phrase be not a self-contradiction. + +In Milton, nature is not put forward as the poet's theme. His theme +is man, in the two contrasted moods of joyous emotion, or grave +reflection. The shifting scenery ministers to the varying mood. +Thomson, in the _Seasons_ (1726), sets himself to render natural +phenomena as they truly are. He has left us a vivid presentation in +gorgeous language of the naturalistic calendar of the changing year. +Milton, in these two idylls, has recorded a day of twenty-four +hours. But he has not registered the phenomena; he places us at the +standpoint of the man before whom they deploy. And the man, joyous +or melancholy, is not a bare spectator of them; he is the student, +compounded of sensibility and intelligence, of whom we are not told +that he saw so and so, or that he felt so, but with whom we are +made copartners of his thoughts and feeling. Description melts into +emotion, and contemplation bodies itself in imagery. All the charm of +rural life is there, but it is not tendered to us in the form of a +landscape; the scenery is subordinated to the human figure in the +centre. + +These two short idylls are marked by a gladsome spontaneity which +never came to Milton again. The delicate fancy and feeling which play +about _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ never reappear, and form a strong +contrast to the austere imaginings of his later poetical period. These +two poems have the freedom and frolic, the natural grace of movement, +the improvisation, of the best Elizabethan examples, while both +thoughts and words are under a strict economy unknown to the diffuse +exuberance of the Spenserians. + +In _Lycidas_ (1637) we have reached the high-water mark of English +Poesy and of Milton's own production. A period of a century and a half +was to elapse before poetry in England seemed, in Wordsworth's _Ode +on Immortality_ (1807), to be rising again towards the level of +inspiration which it had once attained in _Lycidas_. And in the +development of the Miltonic genius this wonderful dirge marks the +culminating point. As the twin idylls of 1632 show a great advance +upon the _Ode on the Nativity_ (1629), the growth of the poetic mind +during the five years which follow 1632 is registered in _Lycidas_. +Like the _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, _Lycidas_ is laid out on the +lines of the accepted pastoral fiction; like them it offers exquisite +touches of idealised rural life. But _Lycidas_ opens up a deeper vein +of feeling, a patriot passion so vehement and dangerous, that, like +that which stirred the Hebrew prophet, it is compelled to veil itself +from power, or from sympathy, in utterance made purposely enigmatical. +The passage which begins "Last came and last did go", raises in us a +thrill of awe-struck expectation which. I can only compare with that +excited by the Cassandra of Aeschylus's _Agamemnon_. For the reader to +feel this, he must have present in memory the circumstances of England +in 1637. He must place himself as far as possible in the situation of +a contemporary. The study of Milton's poetry compels the study of his +time; and Professor Masson's six volumes are not too much to enable +us to understand that there were real causes for the intense passion +which glows underneath the poet's words--a passion which unexplained +would be thought to be intrusive. + +The historical exposition must be gathered from the English history of +the period, which may be read in Professor Masson's excellent summary. +All I desire to point out here is, that in _Lycidas_, Milton's +original picturesque vein is for the first time crossed with one +of quite another sort, stern, determined, obscurely indicative of +suppressed passion, and the resolution to do or die. The fanaticism of +the covenanter and the sad grace of Petrarch seem to meet in Milton's +monody. Yet these opposites, instead of neutralising each other, are +blended into one harmonious whole by the presiding, but invisible, +genius of the poet. The conflict between the old cavalier world--the +years of gaiety and festivity of a splendid and pleasure-loving court, +and the new puritan world into which love and pleasure were not to +enter--this conflict which was commencing in the social life of +England, is also begun in Milton's own breast, and is reflected in +_Lycidas_. + + For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill. + +Here is the sweet mournfulness of the Spenserian time, upon whose joys +Death is the only intruder. Pass onward a little, and you are in presence +of the tremendous + + Two-handed engine at the door, + +the terror of which is enhanced by its obscurity. We are very sure +that the avenger is there, though we know not who he is. In these +thirty lines we have the preluding mutterings of the storm which was +to sweep away mask and revel and song, to inhibit the drama, and +suppress poetry. In the earlier poems Milton's muse has sung in the +tones of the age that is passing away; the poet is, except in his +austere chastity, a cavalier. Though even in _L'Allegro_ Dr. Johnson +truly detects "some melancholy in his mirth." In _Lycidas_, for a +moment, the tones of both ages, the past and the coming, are combined, +and then Milton leaves behind him for ever the golden age, and one +half of his poetic genius. He never fulfilled the promise with which +_Lycidas_ concludes, "Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +JOURNEY TO ITALY. + + +Before 1632 Milton had begun to learn Italian. His mind, just then +open on all sides to impressions from books, was peculiarly attracted +by Italian poetry. The language grew to be loved for its own sake. +Saturated as he was with Dante and Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto, the +desire arose to let the ear drink in the music of Tuscan speech. + +The "unhappy gift of beauty," which has attracted the spoiler of all +ages to the Italian peninsula, has ever exerted, and still exerts, a +magnetic force on every cultivated mind. Manifold are the sources of +this fascination now. The scholar and the artist, the antiquarian and +the historian, the architect and the lover of natural scenery, alike +find here the amplest gratification of their tastes. This is so still; +but in the sixteenth century the Italian cities were the only homes +of an ancient and decaying civilization, Not insensible to other +impressions, it was specially the desire of social converse with the +living poets and men of taste--a feeble generation, but one still +nourishing the traditions of the great poetic age--which drew Milton +across the Alps. + +In April, 1637, Milton's mother had died; but his younger brother, +Christopher, had come to live, with his wife, in the paternal home at +Horton. Milton, the father, was not unwilling that his son should have +his foreign tour, as a part of that elaborate education by which he +was qualifying himself for his doubtful vocation. The cost was not +to stand in the way, considerable as it must have been. Howell's +estimate, in his _Instructions for Forreine Travel_, 1642, was 300 l. +a year for the tourist himself, and 50 l. for his man, a sum equal to +about 1000 l. at present. + +Among the letters of introduction with which Milton provided himself, +one was from the aged Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of Eton, in Milton's +immediate neighbourhood. Sir Henry, who had lived a long time in +Italy, impressed upon his young friend the importance of discretion on +the point of religion, and told him the story which he always told to +travellers who asked his advice. "At Siena I was tabled in the house +of one Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman courtier in dangerous times.... +At my departure for Rome I had won confidence enough to beg his advice +how I might carry myself securely there, without offence of others, +or of mine own conscience. 'Signor Arrigo mio,' says he, '_pensieri +stretti ed il viso sciolto_ (thoughts close, countenance open) will go +safely over the whole world.'" Though the intensity of the Catholic +reaction had somewhat relaxed in Italy, the deportment of a Protestant +in the countries which were terrorised by the Inquisition was a matter +which demanded much circumspection. Sir H. Wotton spoke from his own +experience of far more rigorous times than those of the Barberini +Pope. But he may have noticed, even in his brief acquaintance with +Milton, a fearless presumption of speech which was just what was most +likely to bring him into trouble, The event proved that the hint was +not misplaced. For at Rome itself, in the very lion's den, nothing +could content the young zealot but to stand up for his Protestant +creed. Milton would not do as Peter Heylin did, who, when asked as to +his religion, replied that he was a Catholic, which, in a Laudian, was +but a natural equivoque. Milton was resolute in his religion at Rome, +so much so that many were deterred from showing him the civilities +they were prepared to offer. His rule, he says, was "not of my own +accord to introduce in those places conversation about religion, +but, if interrogated respecting the faith, then, whatsoever I should +suffer, to dissemble nothing. What I was, if any one asked, I +concealed from no one; if any one in the very city of the Pope +attacked the orthodox religion, I defended it most freely." Beyond the +statement that the English Jesuits were indignant, we hear of no evil +consequences of this imprudence. Perhaps the Jesuits saw that Milton +was of the stuff that would welcome martyrdom, and were sick of the +affair of Galileo, which had terribly damaged the pretensions of their +church. + +Milton arrived in Paris April or May, 1638. He received civilities +from the English ambassador, Lord Scudamore, who at his request gave +him an introduction to Grotius. Grotius, says Phillips, "took Milton's +visit kindly, and gave him entertainment suitable to his worth, and +the high commendations he had heard of him." We have no other record +of his stay of many days in Paris, though A. Wood supposes that "the +manners and graces of that place were not agreeable to his mind." It +was August before he reached Florence, by way of Nice and Genoa, and +in Florence he spent the two months which we now consider the most +impossible there, the months of August and September. Nor did he +find, as he would find now, the city deserted by the natives. We hear +nothing of Milton's impressions of the place, but of the men whom he +met there he retained always a lively and affectionate remembrance. +The learned and polite Florentines had not fled to the hills from the +stifling heat and blinding glare of the Lung' Arno, but seem to have +carried on their literary meetings in defiance of climate. This +was the age of academies--an institution, Milton says, "of most +praiseworthy effect, both for the cultivation of polite letters +and the keeping up of friendships." Florence had five or six such +societies, the Florentine, the Delia Crusca, the Svogliati, +the Apotisti, &c. It is easy, and usual in our day, to speak +contemptuously of the literary tone of these academies, fostering, +as they did, an amiable and garrulous intercourse of reciprocal +compliment, and to contrast them unfavourably with our societies for +severe research. They were at least evidence of culture, and served to +keep alive the traditions of the more masculine Medicean age. And +that the members of these associations were not unaware of their own +degeneracy and of its cause, we learn from Milton himself. For as +soon as they found that they were safe with the young Briton, they +disclosed their own bitter hatred of the church's yoke which they had +to bear. "I have sate among their learned men," Milton wrote in 1644, +"and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic +freedom as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing +but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was +brought, that this was it which had dampt the glory of Italian wits, +that nothing had been written there now these many years but flattery +and fustian." Milton was introduced at the meetings of their +academies; his presence is recorded on two occasions, of which the +latest is the 16th September at the Svogliati. He paid his scot by +reciting from memory some of his youthful Latin verses, hexameters, +"molto erudite," says the minute-book of the sitting, and others, +which "I shifted, in the scarcity of boots and conveniences, to patch +up." He obtained much credit by these exercises, which, indeed, +deserved it by comparison. He ventured upon the perilous experiment of +offering some compositions in Italian, which, the fastidious Tuscan +ear at least professed to include in those "encomiums which the +Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps." + +The author of _Lycidas_ cannot but have been quite aware of the small +poetical merit of such an ode as that which was addressed to him by +Francini. In this ode Milton is the swan of Thames--"Thames, which, +owing to thee, rivals Boeotian Permessus;" and so forth. But there is +a genuine feeling, an ungrudging warmth of sympathetic recognition +underlying the trite and tumid panegyric. And Milton may have yielded +to the not unnatural impulse of showing his countrymen, that though +not a prophet in boorish and fanatical England, he had found +recognition in the home of letters and arts. Upon us is forced, by +this their different reception of Milton, the contrast between the +two countries, Italy and England, in the middle of the seventeenth +century. The rude north, whose civilisation was all to come, +concentrating all its intelligence in a violent effort to work off the +ecclesiastical poison from its system, is brought into sharp contrast +with the sweet south, whose civilisation is behind it, and whose +intellect, after a severe struggle, has succumbed to the material +force and organisation of the church. + +As soon as the season allowed of it, Milton set forward to Rome, +taking what was then the usual way by Siena. At Rome he spent two +months, occupying himself partly with seeing the antiquities, and +partly with cultivating the acquaintance of natives, and some of the +many foreigners resident in the eternal city. But though he received +much civility, we do not find that he met with the peculiar sympathy +which endeared to him his Tuscan friends. His chief ally was the +German, Lucas Holstenius, a native of Hamburg, who had abjured +Protestantism to become librarian of the Vatican. Holstenius had +resided three years in Oxford, and considered himself bound to repay +to the English scholar some of the attentions he had received himself. +Through Holstenius Milton was presented to the nephew, Francesco +Barberini, who was just then everything in Rome. It was at a concert +at the Barberini palace that Milton heard Leonora Baroni sing. His +three Latin epigrams addressed to this lady, the first singer of +Italy, or of the world at that time, testify to the enthusiasm she +excited in the musical soul of Milton. + +Nor are these three epigrams the only homage which Milton paid to +Italian beauty. The susceptible poet, who in the sunless north would +fain have "sported with the tangles of Neaera's hair," could not +behold Neaera herself and the flashing splendour of her eye, unmoved. +Milton proclaims (_Defensio Secunda_) that in all his foreign tour he +had lived clear from all that is disgraceful. But the pudicity of his +behaviour and language covers a soul tremulous with emotion, whose +passion was intensified by the discipline of a chaste intention. Five +Italian pieces among his poems are to the address of another lady, +whose "majestic movements and love-darting dark brow" had subdued him. +The charm lay in the novelty of this style of beauty to one who came +from the land of the "vermeil-tinctur'd cheek" (_Comus_) and the +"golden nets of hair" (_El._ i. 60). No clue has been discovered to +the name of this divinity, or to the occasion on which, Milton saw +her. + +Of Milton's impression of Rome there is no record. There are no traces +of special observation in his poetry. The description of the city in +_Paradise Regained_ (iv. 32) has nothing characteristic, and could +have been written by one who had never seen it, and by many as well +as by Milton. We get one glimpse of him by aid of the register of the +English College, as dining there at a "sumptuous entertainment" on +30th October, when he met Nicholas Carey, brother of Lord Falkland. +In spite of Sir Henry Wotton's caution, his resoluteness, as A. +Wood calls it, in his religion, besides making the English Jesuits +indignant, caused others, not Jesuits, to withhold civilities. Milton +only tells us himself that the antiquities detained him in Rome about +two months. + +At the end of November he went on to Naples. On the road he fell in +with an Eremite friar, who gave him an introduction to the one man in +Naples whom it was important he should know, Giovanni Battista Manso, +Marquis of Villa. The marquis, now seventy-eight, had been for +two generations the Maecenas of letters in Southern Italy. He had +sheltered Tasso in the former generation, and Marini in the latter. It +was the singular privilege of his old age that he should now entertain +a third poet, greater than either. In spite of his years, he was able +to act as cicerone to the young Englishman over the scenes which he +himself, in his _Life of Tasso_, has described with the enthusiasm of +a poet. But even the high-souled Manso quailed before the terrors of +the Inquisition, and apologised to Milton for not having shown him +greater attention, because he would not be more circumspect in the +matter of religion. Milton's Italian journey brings out the two +conflicting strains of feeling which were uttered together in +_Lycidas_, the poet's impressibility by nature, the freeman's +indignation at clerical domination. + +The time was now at hand when the latter passion, the noble rage +of freedom, was to suppress the more delicate flower of poetic +imagination. Milton's original scheme had included Sicily and Greece. +The serious aspect of affairs at home compelled him to renounce his +project. "I considered it dishonourable to be enjoying myself at my +ease in foreign lands, while my countrymen were striking a blow for +freedom." He retraced his steps leisurely enough, however, making a +halt of two months in Rome, and again one of two months in Florence. +We find him mentioned in the minutes of the academy of the Svogliati +as having been present at three of their weekly meetings, on the 17th, +24th, and 31st March. But the most noteworthy incident of his second +Florentine residence is his interview with Galileo. He had been unable +to see the veteran martyr of science on his first visit. For though +Galileo was at that time living within the walls, he was kept a close +prisoner by the Inquisition, and not allowed either to set foot +outside his own door, or to receive visits from non-Catholics. In the +spring of 1639, however, he was allowed to go back to his villa at +Gioiello, near Arcetri, and Milton obtained admission to him, old, +frail, and blind, but in full possession of his mental faculty. +There is observable in Milton, as Mr. Masson suggests, a prophetic +fascination of the fancy on the subject of blindness. And the deep +impression left by this sight of "the Tuscan artist" is evidenced by +the feeling with which Galileo's name and achievement are imbedded in +_Paradise Lost_. + +From Florence, Milton crossed the Apennines by Bologna and Ferrara +to Venice. From this port he shipped for England the books he had +collected during his tour, books curious and rare as they seemed to +Phillips, and among them a chest or two of choice music books. The +month of April was spent at Venice, and bidding farewell to the +beloved land he would never visit again, Milton passed the Alps to +Geneva. + +No Englishman's foreign pilgrimage was complete without touching at +this marvellous capital of the reformed faith, which with almost no +resources had successfully braved the whole might of the Catholic +reaction. The only record of Milton's stay at Geneva is the album of a +Neapolitan refugee, to which Milton contributed his autograph, under +date 10th June, 1639, with the following quotation:-- + + If virtue feeble were, + Heaven itself would stoop to her. + (From _Comus_). + + Caelum non animum muto, dum trans mare curro. + (From _Horace_.) + +But it is probable that he was a guest in the house of one of the +leading pastors, Giovanni Diodati, whose nephew Charles, a physician +commencing practice in London, was Milton's bosom friend. Here Milton +first heard of the death, in the previous August, of that friend. It +was a heavy blow to him, for one of the chief pleasures of being at +home again would have been to pour into a sympathetic Italian ear the +story of his adventures. The sadness of the homeward journey from +Geneva is recorded for us in the _Epitaphium Damonis_. This piece is +an elegy to the memory of Charles Diodati. It unfortunately differs +from the elegy on King in being written in Latin, and is thus +inaccessible to uneducated readers. As to such readers the topic of +Milton's Latin poetry is necessarily an ungrateful subject, I +will dismiss it here with one remark. Milton's Latin verses are +distinguished from most Neo-latin verse by being a vehicle of real +emotion. His technical skill is said to have been surpassed by others; +but that in which he stands alone is, that in these exercises of +imitative art he is able to remain himself, and to give utterance to +genuine passion. Artificial Arcadianism is as much the frame-work of +the elegy on Diodati as it is of _Lycidas_. We have Daphnis and Bion, +Tityrus and Amyntas for characters, Sicilian valleys for scenery, +while Pan, Pales, and the Fauns represent the supernatural. The +shepherds defend their flocks from wolves and lions. But this +factitious bucolicism is pervaded by a pathos, which, like volcanic +heat, has fused into a new compound the dilapidated débris of the +Theocritean world. And in the Latin elegy there is more tenderness +than in the English. Charles Diodati was much nearer to Milton than +had been Edward King. The sorrow in _Lycidas_ is not so much personal +as it is the regret of the society of Christ's. King had only been +known to Milton as one of the students of the same college; Diodati +was the associate of his choice in riper manhood. + +The _Epitaphium Damonis_ is further memorable as Milton's last attempt +in serious Latin verse. He discovered in this experiment that Latin +was not an adequate vehicle of the feeling he desired to give vent to. +In the concluding lines he takes a formal farewell of the Latian +muse, and announces his purpose of adopting henceforth the "harsh and +grating Brittonic idiom" (_Brittonicum stridens_). + + + + + +_SECOND PERIOD_. 1640-1660. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +EDUCATIONAL THEORY-TEACHING. + + +Milton was back in England in August, 1639. He had been absent a year +and three months, during which space of time the aspect of public +affairs, which had been perplexed and gloomy when he left, had been +growing still more ominous of a coming storm. The issues of the +controversy were so pervasive, that it was almost impossible for any +educated man who understood them not to range himself on a side. Yet +Milton, though he had broken off his projected tour in consequence, +did not rush into the fray on his return. He resumed his retired and +studious life, "with no small delight, cheerfully leaving," as he +says, "the event of public affairs first to God, and then to those to +whom the people had committed that task." + +He did not return to Horton, but took lodgings in London, in the house +of Russel a tailor, in St. Bride's churchyard, at the city end of +Fleet-street, on the site of what is now Farringdon-street. There is +no attempt on the part of Milton to take up a profession, not even for +the sake of appearances. The elder Milton was content to provide the +son, of whom he was proud, with the means of prosecuting his eccentric +scheme of life, to continue, namely, to prepare himself for some great +work, nature unknown. + +For a young man of simple habits and studious life a little suffices. +The chief want is books, and of these, for Milton's style of reading, +select rather than copious, a large collection is superfluous. There +were in 1640 no public libraries in London, and a scholar had to find +his own store of books or to borrow from his friends. Milton never +can have possessed a large library. At Horton he may have used +Kederminster's bequest to Langley Church. Still, with his Italian +acquisitions, added to the books that he already possessed, he soon +found a lodging too narrow for his accommodation, and removed to a +house of his own, "a pretty garden-house, in Aldersgate, at the end of +an entry." Aldersgate was outside the city walls, on the verge of the +open country of Islington, and was a genteel though not a fashionable +quarter. There were few streets in London, says Phillips, more free +from noise. + +He had taken in hand the education of his two nephews, John and Edward +Phillips, sons of his only sister Anne. Anne was a few years older +than her brother John. Her first husband, Edward Phillips, had died in +1631, and the widow had given her two sons a stepfather in one Thomas +Agar, who was in the Clerk of the Crown's office. Milton, on settling +in London in 1639, had at once taken his younger nephew John to live +with him. When, in 1640, he removed to Aldersgate, the elder, Edward, +also came under his roof. + +If it was affection for his sister which first moved Milton to +undertake the tuition of her sons, he soon developed a taste for the +occupation. In 1643 he began to receive into his house other pupils, +but only, says Phillips (who is solicitous that his uncle should not +be thought to have kept a school), "the sons of some gentlemen that +were his intimate friends." He threw into his lessons the same energy +which he carried into everything else. In his eagerness to find a +place for everything that could be learnt, there could have been few +hours in the day which were not invaded by teaching. He had exchanged +the contemplative leisure of Horton for a busy life, in which no hour +but had its calls. Even on Sundays there were lessons in the Greek +Testament and dictations of a system of Divinity in Latin. His +pamphlets of this period betray, in their want of measure and +equilibrium, even in their heated style and passion-flushed language, +the life at high pressure which their author was leading. + +We have no account of Milton's method of teaching from any competent +pupil. Edward Phillips was an amiable and upright man, who earned his +living respectably by tuition and the compilation of books. He held +his uncle's memory in great veneration. But when he comes to +describe the education he received at his uncle's hands, the only +characteristic on which he dwells is that of quantity. Phillips's +account is, however, supplemented for us by Milton's written theory. +His _Tractate of Education to Master Samuel Hartlib_ is probably known +even to those who have never looked at anything else of Milton's in +prose. + +Of all the practical arts, that of education seems the most cumbrous +in its method, and to be productive of the smallest results with the +most lavish expenditure of means. Hence the subject of education is +one which is always luring on the innovator and the theorist. +Every one, as he grows up, becomes aware of time lost, and effort +misapplied, in his own case. It is not unnatural to desire to save our +children from a like waste of power. And in a time such as was that +of Milton's youth, when all traditions were being questioned, and all +institutions were to be remodelled, it was certain that the school +would be among the earliest objects to attract an experimental +reformer. Among the advanced minds of the time there had grown up a +deep dissatisfaction with the received methods of our schools, and +more especially of our universities. The great instaurator of all +knowledge, Bacon, in preaching the necessity of altering the whole +method of knowing, included as matter of course the method of teaching +to know. + +The man who carried over the Baconian aspiration into education was +Comenius (d. 1670). A projector and enthusiast, Comenius desired, like +Bacon, an entirely new intellectual era. With Bacon's intellectual +ambition, but without Bacon's capacity, Comenius proposed to +revolutionise all knowledge, and to make complete wisdom accessible to +all, in a brief space of time, and with a minimum of labour. Language +only as an instrument, not as an end in itself; many living languages, +instead of the one dead language of the old school; a knowledge of +things, instead of words; the free use of our eyes and ears upon the +nature that surrounds us; intelligent apprehension, instead of loading +the memory--all these doctrines, afterwards inherited by the party +of rational reform, were first promulgated in Europe by the numerous +pamphlets--some ninety have been reckoned up--of this Teuto-Slav, +Comenius. + +Comenius had as the champion of his views in England Samuel Hartlib, +a Dantziger by origin, settled in London since 1628. Hartlib had even +less of real science than Comenius, but he was equally possessed by +the Baconian ideal of a new heaven and a new earth of knowledge. Not +himself a discoverer in any branch, he was unceasingly occupied in +communicating the discoveries and inventions of others. He had an ear +for every novelty of whatever kind, interesting himself in social, +religious, philanthropic schemes, as well as in experiments in the +arts. A sanguine universality of benevolence pervaded that generation +of ardent souls, akin only in their common anticipation of an unknown +Utopia. A secret was within the reach of human ingenuity which would +make all mankind happy. But there were two directions more especially +in which Hartlib's zeal without knowledge abounded. These were a grand +scheme for the union of Protestant Christendom, and his propagand of +Comenius's school-reform. + +For the first of these projects it was not likely that Hartlib would +gain a proselyte in Milton, who had at one-and-twenty judged Anglican +orders a servitude, and was already chafing against the restraints of +Presbytery. But on his other hobby, that of school-reform, Milton was +not only sympathetic, but when Hartlib came to talk with him, he +found that most or all of Comenius's ideas had already independently +presented themselves to the reflection or experience of the +Englishman. At Hartlib's request Milton consented to put down his +thoughts on paper, and even to print them in a quarto pamphlet of +eight pages, entitled, _Of Education: to Master Samuel Hartlib_. + +This tract, often reproduced and regarded, along with one of Locke's, +as a substantial contribution to the subject, must often have +grievously disappointed those who have eagerly consulted it for +practical hints or guidance of any kind. Its interest is wholly +biographical. It cannot be regarded as a valuable contribution to +educational theory, but it is strongly marked with the Miltonic +individuality. We find in it the same lofty conception of the aim +which Milton carried into everything he attempted; the same disdain of +the beaten routine, and proud reliance upon his own resources. He had +given vent elsewhere to his discontent with the system of Cambridge, +"which, as in the time of her better health, and mine own younger +judgment, I never greatly admired, so now (1642) much less." In the +letter to Hartlib he denounces with equal fierceness the schools and +"the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing +and so unsuccessful." The alumni of the universities carry away with +them a hatred and contempt for learning, and sink into "ignorantly +zealous" clergymen, or mercenary lawyers, while the men of fortune +betake themselves to feasts and jollity. These last, Milton thinks, +are the best of the three classes. + +All these moral shipwrecks are the consequence, according to Milton, +of bad education. It is in our power to avert them by a reform of +schools. But the measures of reform, when produced, are ludicrously +incommensurable with the evils to be remedied. I do not trouble the +reader with the proposals; they are a form of the well-known mistake +of regarding education as merely the communication of useful +knowledge. The doctrine as propounded in the _Tractate_ is complicated +by the further difficulty, that the knowledge is to be gathered out of +Greek and Latin books. This doctrine is advocated by Milton with the +ardour of his own lofty enthusiasm. In virtue of the grandeur of zeal +which inspires them, these pages, which are in substance nothing more +than the now familiar omniscient examiner's programme, retain a place +as one of our classics. The fine definition of education here given +has never been improved upon: "I call a complete and generous +education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and +magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and +war." This is the true Milton. When he offers, in another page, as an +equivalent definition of the true end of learning, "to repair the ruin +of our first parents by regaining to know God aright," we have the +theological Milton, and what he took on from the current language of +his age. + +Milton saw strongly, as many have done before and since, one weak +point in the practice of schools, namely, the small result of much +time. He fell into the natural error of the inexperienced teacher, +that of supposing that the remedy was the ingestion of much and +diversified intelligible matter. It requires much observation of +young minds to discover that the rapid inculcation of unassimilated +information stupefies the faculties instead of training them. Is it +fanciful to think that in Edward Phillips, who was always employing +his superficial pen upon topics with which he snatched a fugitive +acquaintance, we have a concrete example of the natural result of the +Miltonic system of instruction? + + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +MARRIAGE, AND PAMPHLETS ON DIVORCE + + +We have seen that Milton turned back from his unaccomplished tour +because he "deemed it disgraceful to be idling away his time abroad +for his own gratification, while his countrymen were contending for +their liberty." From these words biographers have inferred that he +hurried home with the view of taking service in the Parliamentarian +army. This interpretation of his words seems to receive confirmation +from what Phillips thinks he had heard,--"I am much mistaken if +there were not about this time a design in agitation of making him +Adjutant-General in Sir William Waller's army." Phillips very likely +thought that a recruit could enlist as an Adjutant-General, but +it does not appear from Milton's own words that he himself ever +contemplated service in the field. The words "contending for liberty" +(de libertate dimicarent) could not, as said of the winter 1638-39, +mean anything more than the strife of party. And when war did break +out, it must have been obvious to Milton that he could serve the cause +better as a scholar than as a soldier. + +That he never took service in the army is certain. If there was a +time when he should have been found in the ranks, it was on the 12th +November, 1642, when every able-bodied citizen turned out to oppose +the march of the king, who had advanced to Brentford. But we have the +evidence of the sonnet-- + + Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in arms, + +that Milton, on this occasion, stayed at home. He had, as he announced +in February, 1642, "taken labour and intent study" to be his portion +in this life. He did not contemplate enlisting his pen in the service +of the Parliament, but the exaltation of his country's glory by the +composition of some monument of the English language, as Dante or +Tasso had done for Italian. But a project ambitious as this lay too +far off to be put in execution as soon as thought of. The ultimate +purpose had to give place to the immediate. One of these interludes, +originating in Milton's personal relations, was his series of tracts +on divorce. + +In the early part of the summer of 1643, Milton took a sudden journey +into the country, "nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or +that it was any more than a journey of recreation." He was absent +about a month, and when he returned he brought back a wife with him. +Nor was the bride alone. She was attended "by some few of her nearest +relations," and there was feasting and celebration of the nuptials, in +the house in Aldersgate-street. + +The bride's name was Mary, eldest daughter of Richard Powell, Esq., of +Forest Hill, J.P. for the county of Oxford. Forest Hill is a village +and parish about five miles from Oxford on the Thame road, where Mr. +Powell had a house and a small estate of some 300 l. a year, value of +that day. Forest Hill was within the ancient royal forest of Shotover, +of which Mr. Powell was lessee. The reader will remember that the +poet's father was born at Stanton St. John, the adjoining parish +to Forest Hill, and that Richard Milton, the grandfather, had been +under-ranger of the royal forest. There had been many transactions +between the Milton and the Powell families as far back as 1627. In +paying a visit to that neighbourhood, Milton was both returning to the +district which had been the home of all the Miltons, and renewing an +old acquaintance with the Powell family. Mr. Powell, though in receipt +of a fair income for a country gentleman--300 l. a year of that day may +be roughly valued at 1000 l. of our day--and his wife had brought him +3000 l., could not live within his means. His children were numerous, +and, belonging as he did to the cavalier party, his house was +conducted with the careless hospitality of a royalist gentleman. +Twenty years before he had begun borrowing, and among other +persons had had recourse to the prosperous and saving scrivener of +Bread-street. He was already mortgaged to the Miltons, father and +sons, more deeply than his estate had any prospect of paying, which +was perhaps the reason why he found no difficulty in promising a +portion of 1000 l. with his daughter. Milton, with a poet's want +of caution, or indifference to money, and with a lofty masculine +disregard of the temper and character of the girl he asked to share +his life, came home with his bride in triumph, and held feasting in +celebration of his hasty and ill-considered choice. It was a beginning +of sorrows to him. Hitherto, up to his thirty-fifth year, independent +master of leisure and the delights of literature, his years had passed +without a check or a shadow. From this day forward domestic misery, +the importunities of business, the clamour of controversy, crowned by +the crushing calamity of blindness, were to be his portion for more +than thirty years. Singular among poets in the serene fortune of the +first half of life, in the second half his piteous fate was to rank in +wretchedness with that of his masters, Dante or Tasso. + +The biographer, acquainted with the event, has no difficulty in +predicting it, and in saying at this point in his story, that Milton +might have known better than, with his puritanical connections, to +have taken to wife a daughter of a cavalier house, to have brought her +from a roystering home, frequented by the dissolute officers of the +Oxford garrison, to the spare diet and philosophical retirement of a +recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his +speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl. Love has blinded, +and will continue to blind, the wisest men to calculations as easy and +as certain as these. And Milton, in whose soul Puritan austerity was +as yet only contending with the more genial currents of humanity, had +a far greater than average susceptibility to the charm of woman. Even +at the later date of _Paradise Lost_, voluptuous thoughts, as Mr. +Hallam has observed, are not uncongenial to him. And at an earlier +age his poems, candidly pure from the lascivious inuendoes of his +contemporaries, have preserved the record of the rapid impression of +the momentary passage of beauty upon his susceptible mind. Once, at +twenty, he was set all on flame by the casual meeting, in one of his +walks in the suburbs of London, with a damsel whom he never saw again. +Again, sonnets III. to V. tell how he fell before the new type of +foreign beauty which crossed his path at Bologna. A similar surprise +of his fancy at the expense of his judgment seems to have happened on +the present occasion of his visit to Shotover. There is no evidence +that Mary Powell was handsome, and we may be sure that it would +have been mentioned if she had been. But she had youth, and country +freshness; her "unliveliness and natural sloth unfit for conversation" +passed as "the bashful muteness of a virgin;" and if a doubt intruded +that he was being too hasty, Milton may have thought that a girl of +seventeen could be moulded at pleasure. + +He was too soon undeceived. His dream of married happiness barely +lasted out the honeymoon. He found that he had mated himself to a +clod of earth, who not only was not now, but had not the capacity +of becoming, a helpmeet for him. With Milton, as with the whole +Calvinistic and Puritan Europe, woman was a creature of an inferior +and subordinate class. Man was the final cause of God's creation, and +woman was there to minister to this nobler being. In his dogmatic +treatise, _De doctrina Christiana_, Milton formulated this sentiment +in the thesis, borrowed from the schoolmen, that the soul was +communicated "in semine patris." The cavalier section of society had +inherited the sentiment of chivalry, and contrasted with the roundhead +not more by its loyalty to the person of the prince, than by its +recognition of the superior grace and refinement of womanhood. Even in +the debased and degenerate epoch of court life which followed 1660, +the forms and language of homage still preserved the tradition of a +nobler scheme of manners. The Puritan had thrown off chivalry as being +parcel of Catholicism, and had replaced it by the Hebrew ideal of the +subjection and seclusion of woman. Milton, in whose mind the rigidity +of Puritan doctrine was now contending with the freer spirit of +culture and romance, shows on the present occasion a like conflict of +doctrine with sentiment. While he adopts the oriental hypothesis of +woman for the sake of man, he modifies it by laying more stress upon +mutual affection, the charities of home, and the intercommunion of +intellectual and moral life, than upon that ministration of woman to +the appetite and comforts of man, which makes up the whole of her +functions in the Puritan apprehension. The failure in his own case to +obtain this genial companionship of soul, which he calls "the gentlest +end of marriage," is what gave the keenest edge to his disappointment +in his matrimonial venture. + +But however keenly he felt and regretted the precipitancy which had +yoked him for life to "a mute and spiritless mate," the breach did not +come from his side. The girl herself conceived an equal repugnance to +the husband she had thoughtlessly accepted, probably on the strength +of his good looks, which was all of Milton that she was capable of +appreciating. A young bride, taken suddenly from the freedom of a +jovial and an undisciplined home, rendered more lax by civil confusion +and easy intercourse with the officers of the royalist garrison, +and committed to the sole society of a stranger, and that stranger +possessing the rights of a husband, and expecting much from all who +lived with him, may not unnaturally have been seized with panic +terror, and wished herself home again. The young Mrs. Milton not only +wished it, but incited her family to write and beg that she might be +allowed to go home to stay the remainder of the summer. The request to +quit her husband at the end of the first month was so unreasonable, +that the parents would hardly have made it if they had not suspected +some profound cause of estrangement. Nor could Milton have consented, +as he did, to so extreme a remedy unless he had felt that the case +required no less, and that her mother's advice and influence were the +most available means of awakening his wife to a sense of her duty, +Milton's consent was therefore given. He may hare thought it desirable +she should go, and thus Mrs. Powell would not have been going very +much beyond the truth when she pretended some years afterwards that +her son-in-law had turned away his wife for a long space. + +Mary Milton went to Forest Hill in July, but on the understanding that +she was to come back at Michaelmas. When the appointed time came, she +did not appear. Milton wrote for her to come. No answer. Several other +letters met the same fate. At last he despatched a foot messenger +to Forest Hill desiring her return. The messenger came back only to +report that he had been "dismissed with some sort of contempt." It was +evident that Mary Milton's family had espoused her cause as against +her husband. Whatever may have been the secret motive of their +conduct, they explained the quarrel politically, and began to repent, +so Phillips thought, of having matched the eldest daughter of their +house with a violent Presbyterian. + +If Milton had "hasted too eagerly to light the nuptial torch," he had +been equally ardent in his calculations of the domestic happiness upon +which he was to enter. His poet's imagination had invested a dull +and common girl with rare attributes moral and intellectual, and had +pictured for him the state of matrimony as an earthly paradise, in +which he was to be secure of a response of affection showing itself in +a communion of intelligent interests. In proportion to the brilliancy +of his ideal anticipation was the fury of despair which came upon him +when he found out his mistake. A common man, in a common age, would +have vented his vexation upon the individual. Milton, living at a time +when controversy turned away from details, and sought to dig down to +the roots of every question, instead of urging the hardships of his +own case, set to to consider the institution of marriage in itself. He +published a pamphlet with the title, _The Doctrine and Discipline +of Divorce_, at first anonymously, but putting his name to a second +edition, much enlarged. He further reinforced this argument in chief +with three supplementary pamphlets, partly in answer to opponents and +objectors; for there was no lack of opposition, indeed of outcry loud +and fierce. + +A biographer closely scans the pages of these pamphlets, not for the +sake of their direct argument, but to see if he can extract from them +any indirect hints of their author's personal relations. There is +found in them no mention of Milton's individual case. Had we no other +information, we should not be authorised to infer from them that the +question of the marriage tie was more than an abstract question with +the author. + +But though all mention of his own case is studiously avoided by +Milton, his pamphlet, when read by the light of Phillips's brief +narrative, does seem to give some assistance in apprehending the +circumstances of this obscure passage of the poet's life. The mystery +has always been felt by the biographers, but has assumed a darker hue +since the discovery by Mr. Masson of a copy of the first edition of +_The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, with the written date +of August 1. According to Phillips's narrative, the pamphlet was +engendered by Milton's indignation at his wife's contemptuous +treatment of him, in refusing to keep the engagement to return at +Michaelmas, and would therefore be composed in October and November, +time enough to allow for the sale of the edition, and the preparation +of the enlarged edition, which came out in February, 1644. But if the +date "August 1" for the first edition be correct, we have to suppose +that Milton was occupying himself with the composition of a vehement +and impassioned argument in favour of divorce for incompatibility of +temper, during the honeymoon! Such behaviour on Milton's part, he +being thirty-five, towards a girl of seventeen, to whom he was bound, +to show all loving tenderness, is so horrible, that a suggestion has +been made that there was a more adequate cause for his displeasure, a +suggestion, which Milton's biographer is bound to notice, even if he +does not adopt it. The suggestion, which I believe was first made by a +writer in the _Athenaeum_, is that Milton's young wife refused him +the consummation of the marriage. The supposition is founded upon a +certain passage in Milton's pamphlet. + +If the early date of the pamphlet be the true date; if the _Doctrine +and Discipline_ was in the hands of the public on August 1 if Milton +was brooding over this seething agony of passion all through July, +with the young bride, to whom he had been barely wedded a month, in +the house where he was writing, then the only apology for this outrage +upon the charities, not to say decencies, of home is that which is +suggested by the passage referred to. Then the pamphlet, however +imprudent, becomes pardonable. It is a passionate cry from the depths +of a great despair; another evidence of the noble purity of a nature +which refused to console itself as other men would have consoled +themselves; a nature which, instead of an egotistical whine for its +own deliverance, sets itself to plead the common cause of man and of +society. He gives no intimation of any individual interest, but his +argument throughout glows with a white heat of concealed emotion, such +as could only he stirred by the sting of some personal and present +misery. + +Notwithstanding the amount of free opinion abroad in England, or at +least in London, at this date, Milton's divorce pamphlets created a +sensation of that sort which Gibbon is fond of calling a scandal. +A scandal, in this sense, must always arise in your own party; you +cannot scandalise the enemy. And so it was now. The Episcopalians +were rejoiced that Milton should ruin his credit with his own side by +advocating a paradox. The Presbyterians hastened to disown a man who +enabled their opponents to brand their religious scheme as the parent +of moral heresies. For though church government and the English +constitution in all its parts had begun to be open questions, +speculation had not as yet attacked either of the two bases of +society, property or the family. Loud was the outcry of the +Philistines. There was no doubt that the rigid bonds of Presbyterian +orthodoxy would not in any case have long held Milton. They were +snapped at once by the publication of his opinions on divorce, and +Milton is henceforward to be ranked among the most independent of the +new party which shortly after this date began to be heard of under the +name of Independents. + +But the men who formed the nucleus of this new mode of thinking were +as yet, in 1643, not consolidated into a sect, still less was their +importance as the coming political party dreamt of. At present they +were units, only drawn to each other by the sympathy of opinion. The +contemptuous epithets, Anabaptist, Antinomian, &c., could be levelled +against them with fatal effect by every Philistine, and were freely +used on this occasion against Milton. He says of himself that he now +lived in a world of disesteem. Nor was there wanting, to complete +his discomfiture, the practical parody of the doctrine of divorce. +A Mistress Attaway, lacewoman in Bell-alley, and she-preacher in. +Coleman-street, had been reading Master Milton's book, and remembered +that she had an unsanctified husband, who did not speak the language +of Canaan. She further reflected that Mr. Attaway was not only +unsanctified, but was also absent with the army, while William +Jenney was on the spot, and, like herself, also a preacher. Could a +"scandalised" Presbyterian help pointing the finger of triumphant +scorn at such examples, the natural fruits of that mischievous book, +_The Doctrine and Discipline_? + +Beyond the stage of scandal and disesteem the matter did not proceed. +In dedicating _The Doctrine and Discipline_ to the Parliament, Milton +had specially called on that assembly to legislate for the relief of +men who were encumbered with unsuitable spouses. No notice was taken +of this appeal, as there was far other work on hand, and no particular +pressure from without in the direction of Milton's suit. Divorce for +incompatibility of temper remained his private crotchet, or obtained +converts only among his fellow-sufferers, who, however numerous, did +not form a body important enough to enforce by clamour their demand +for relief. + +Milton was not very well pleased to find that the Parliament had no +ear for the bitter cry of distress wrung from their ardent admirer and +staunch adherent. Accordingly, in 1645, in dedicating the last of +the divorce pamphlets, which, he entitled _Tetrachordon_, to the +Parliament, he concluded with a threat, "If the law make not a +timely provision, let the law, as reason is, bear the censure of the +consequences." + +This threat he was prepared to put in execution, and did, in 1645, as +Phillips tells us, contemplate a union, which could not have been a +marriage, with another woman. He was able at this time to find some +part of that solace of conversation which his wife failed to give him, +among his female acquaintance. Especially we find him at home in the +house of one of the Parliamentary women, the Lady Margaret Ley, a lady +"of great wit and ingenuity," the "honoured Margaret" of Sonnet x. But +the Lady Margaret was a married woman, being the wife of a Captain +Hobson, a "very accomplished gentleman," of the Isle of Wight. The +young lady who was the object of his attentions, and who, if she were +the "virtuous young lady" of Sonnet ix., was "in the prime of earliest +youth," was a daughter of a Dr. Davis, of whom nothing else is now +known. She is described by Phillips, who may have seen her, as a very +handsome and witty gentlewoman. Though Milton was ready to brave +public opinion. Miss Davis was not. And so the suit hung, when all +schemes of the kind were pat an end to by the unexpected submission of +Mary Powell. + +Since October, 1643, when Milton's messenger had been dismissed +from Forest Hill, the face of the civil struggle was changed. The +Presbyterian army had been replaced by that of the Independents, and +the immediate consequence had been the decline of the royal cause, +consummated by its total ruin on the day of Naseby, in June, 1645. +Oxford was closely invested, Forest Hill occupied by the besiegers, +and the Powell family compelled to take refuge within the lines of +the city. Financial bankruptcy, too, had overtaken the Powells. These +influences, rather than any rumours which may hare reached them of +Milton's designs in regard to Miss Davis, wrought a change in the +views of the Powell family. By the triumph of the Independents Mr. +Milton was become a man of consideration, and might be useful as a +protector. They concluded that the best thing they could do was to +seek a reconciliation. There were not wanting friends of Milton's +also, some perhaps divining his secret discontent, who thought that +such reconciliation would be better for him too, than perilling his +happiness upon the experiment of an illegal connexion. A conspiracy of +the friends of both parties contrived to introduce Mary Powell into +a house where Milton often visited in St. Martin's-le-Grand. She was +secreted in an adjoining room, on an occasion when Milton was known +to be coming, and he was surprised by seeing her suddenly brought in, +throw herself on her knees, and ask to be forgiven. The poor young +thing, now two years older and wiser, but still only nineteen, +pleaded, truly or falsely, that her mother "had been all along the +chief promoter of her frowardness" Milton, with a "noble leonine +clemency" which became him, cared not for excuses for the past. It was +enough that she was come back, and was willing to live with him as his +wife. He received her at once, and not only her, but on the surrender +of Oxford, in June, 1646, and the sequestration of Forest Hill, took +in the whole family of Powells, including the mother-in-law, whose +influence with her daughter might even again trouble his peace. + +It is impossible not to see that Milton had this impressive scene, +enacted in St. Martin's-le-Grand in 1645, before his mind, when he +wrote, twenty years afterwards, the lines in _Paradise Lost_, x. +937:-- + + ... Eve, with tears that ceas'd not flowing + And tresses all disorder'd, at his feet + Fell humble, and embracing them, besought + His peace... + + ... Her lowly plight + Immovable, till peace obtain'd from fault + Acknowledg'd and deplor'd, in Adam wrought + Commiseration; soon his heart relented + Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight, + Now at his feet submissive in distress! + Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, + + * * * * * + + At once disarm'd, his anger all he lost. + +The garden-house in Aldersgate-street had before been found too small +for the pupils who were being now pressed upon Milton. It was to a +larger house in Barbican, a side street leading out of Aldersgate, +that he brought the Powells and Mary Milton. Milton probably abated +his exactions on the point of companionship, and learned to be content +with her acquiescence in the duties of a wife. In July, 1646, she +became a mother, and bore in all four children. Of these, three, all +daughters, lived to grow up. Mary Milton herself died in giving birth +to the fourth child in the summer of 1652. She was only twenty-six, +and had been married to Milton nine years. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +PAMPHLETS. + + +We have now seen Milton engaged in teaching and writing on education, +involved in domestic unhappiness, and speculating on the obligations +of marriage. But neither of these topics formed the principal +occupation of his mind during these years. He had renounced a +cherished scheme of travel because his countrymen were engaged at home +in contending for their liberties, and it could not but be that the +gradually intensified stages of that struggle engrossed his interest, +and claimed his participation. + +So imperative did he regard this claim that he allowed it to override +the purposed dedication of his life to poetry. Not indeed for ever and +aye, but for a time. As he had renounced Greece, the Aegean Isles, +Thebes, and the East for the fight for freedom, so now to the same +cause he postponed the composition of his epic of Arthurian romance, +or whatever his mind "in the spacious circuits of her musing proposed +to herself of highest hope and hardest attempting." No doubt at first, +in thus deferring the work of his life, he thought the delay would be +for a brief space. He did not foresee that having once taken an oar, +he would be chained to it for more than twenty years, and that he +would finally owe his release to the ruin of the cause he had served. +But for the Restoration and the overthrow of the Puritans, we should +never have had the great Puritan epic. + +The period then of his political activity is to be regarded as an +episode in the life of the poet Milton. It is indeed an episode which +fills twenty years, and those the most vigorous years of manhood, from +his thirty-second to his fifty-second year. He himself was conscious +of the sacrifice he was making, and apologises to the public for thus +defrauding them of the better work which he stood pledged to execute. +As he puts it, there was no choice for him. He could not help himself, +at this critical juncture, "when the Church of God was at the foot +of her insulting enemies;" he would never have ceased to reproach +himself, if he had refused to employ the fruits of his studies in her +behalf. He saw also that a generation inflamed by the passions of +conflict, and looking in breathless suspense for the issue of battles, +was not in a mood to attend to poetry. Nor, indeed, was he ready to +write, "not having yet (this is in 1642) completed to my mind the full +circle of my private studies." + +But though he is drawn into the strife against his will, and in +defiance of his genius, when he is in it, he throws into it the whole +vehemence of his nature. The pamphlet period, I have said, is an +episode in the life of the poet. But it is a genuine part of Milton's +life. However his ambition may have been set upon an epic crown, his +zeal for what he calls the church was an equal passion, nay had, in +his judgment, a paramount claim upon him, He is a zealot among +the zealots; his cause is the cause of God; and the sword of the +Independents is the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. He does not +refute opponents, but curses enemies. Yet his rage, even when most +delirious, is always a Miltonic rage; it is grand, sublime, terrible! +Mingled with the scurrilities of the theological brawl are passages +of the noblest English ever written. Hartley Coleridge explains the +dulness of the wit-combats in Shakspeare and Jonson, on the ground +that repartee is the accomplishment of lighter thinkers and a less +earnest age. So of Milton's pamphlets it must be said that he was not +fencing for pastime, but fighting for all he held most worthy. He had +to think only of making his blows tell. When a battle is raging, and +my friends are sorely pressed, am I not to help because good manners +forbid the shedding of blood? + +No good man can, with impunity, addict himself to party. And the best +men will suffer most, because their conviction of the goodness of +their cause is deeper. But when one with the sensibility of a poet +throws himself into the excitements of a struggle, he is certain to +lose his balance. The endowment of feeling and imagination which +qualifies him to be the ideal interpreter of life, unfits him +for participation in that real life, through the manoeuvres and +compromises of which reason is the only guide, and where imagination +is as much misplaced as it would be in a game of chess. "The ennobling +difference between one man and another is that one feels more than +another." Milton's capacity of emotion, when once he became champion +of a cause, could not be contained within the bounds of ordinary +speech. It breaks into ferocious reprobation, into terrific blasts of +vituperation, beneath which the very language creaks, as the timbers +of a ship in a storm. Corruptio optimi pessima. The archangel +is recognisable by the energy of his malice. Were all those +accomplishments; those many studious years hiving wisdom, the +knowledge of all the tongues, the command of all the thoughts of +all the ages, and that wealth of English expression--were all these +acquirements only of use, that their possessor might vie in defamation +with an Edwards or a Du Moulin? + +For it should be noted that these pamphlets, now only serving as a +record of the prostitution of genius to political party, were, at the +time at which they appeared, of no use to the cause in which they +were written. Writers, with a professional tendency to magnify their +office, have always been given to exaggerate the effect of printed +words. There are examples of thought having been influenced by +books. But such books have been scientific, not rhetorical. Milton's +pamphlets are not works of speculation, or philosophy, or learning, or +solid reasoning on facts. They are inflammatory appeals, addressed to +the passions of the hour. He who was meditating the erection of an +enduring creation, such as the world "would not willingly let die," +was content to occupy himself with the most ephemeral of all hackwork. +His own polemical writings may be justly described in the words he +himself uses of a book by one of his opponents, as calculated "to +gain a short, contemptible, and soon-fading reward, not to stir the +constancy and solid firmness of any wise man ... but to catch the +worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and image-doting +rabble." + +It would have been not unnatural that the public school and university +man, the admirer of Shakspeare and the old romances, the pet of +Italian academies, the poet-scholar, himself the author of two Masks, +who was nursing his wings for a new flight into the realms of verse, +should have sided with the cavaliers against the Puritans, with the +party of culture and the humanities against the party which shut up +the theatres and despised profane learning. But we have seen that +there was another side to Milton's mind. This may be spoken of as his +other self, the Puritan self, and regarded as in internal conflict +with the poet's self. His twenty years' pamphlet warfare may be +presented by his biographer as the expression of the Puritanic Milton, +who shall have been driven back upon his suppressed instincts as a +poet by the ruin of his political hopes. This chart of Milton's life +is at once simple and true. But like all physiological diagrams it +falls short of the subtlety and complexity of human character. A study +of the pamphlets will show that the poet is all there, indeed only too +openly for influence on opinion, and that the blighted hope of +the patriot lends a secret pathos to _Paradise Lost_ and _Samson +Agonistes_. + +This other element in Milton is not accurately named Puritanism. Even +the term republicanism is a coarse and conventional description of +that sentiment which dominated his whole being, and which is the +inspiration at once of his poetry and of his prose. To give a name +to this sentiment, I must call it the love of liberty. It was an +aspiration at once real and vague, after a new order of things, an +order in which the old injustices and oppressions should cease; after +a new Jerusalem, a millennium, a Utopia, an Oceana. Its aim was to +realise in political institutions that great instauration of which +Bacon dreamed in the world of intelligence. It was much more negative +than affirmative, and knew better, as we all do, how good was hindered +than how it should be promoted. "I did but prompt the age to _quit +their clogs_." Milton embodied, more perfectly than any of his +cotemporaries, this spirit of the age. It is the ardent aspiration, +after the pure and noble life, the aspiration which stamps every line +he wrote, verse or prose, with a dignity as of an heroic age. This +gives consistency to all his utterances. The doctrinaire republican of +to-day cannot understand how the man who approved the execution of the +would-be despot Charles Stuart, should have been the hearty supporter +of the real autocrat Oliver Cromwell. Milton was not the slave of a +name. He cared not for the word republic, so as it was well with the +commonwealth. Parliaments or single rulers, he knew, are "but means +to an end; if that end was obtained, no matter if the constitutional +guarantees exist or not. Many of Milton's pamphlets are certainly +party pleadings, choleric, one-sided, personal. But through them all +runs the one redeeming characteristic--that they are all written +on the side of liberty. He defended religious liberty against the +prelates, civil liberty against the crown, the liberty of the +press against the executive, liberty of conscience against the +Presbyterians, and domestic liberty against the tyranny of canon law. +Milton's pamphlets might have been stamped with the motto which Selden +inscribed (in Greek) in all his books, "Liberty before everything." + +One virtue these pamphlets possess, the virtue of style. They are +monuments of our language so remarkable that Milton's prose works must +always be resorted to by students, as long as English remains a medium +of ideas. Yet even on the score of style, Milton's prose is subject to +serious deductions. His negligence is such as to amount to an absence +of construction. He who, in his verse, trained the sentence with +delicate sensibility to follow his guiding hand into exquisite syntax, +seems in his prose writing to abandon his meaning to shift for itself. +Here Milton compares disadvantageously with Hooker. Hooker's elaborate +sentence, like the sentence of Demosthenes, is composed of parts +so hinged, of clauses so subordinated to the main thought, that we +foresee the end from the beginning, and close the period with a sense +of perfect roundness and totality. Milton does not seem to have any +notion of what a period means. He begins anywhere, and leaves off, not +when the sense closes, but when he is out of breath. We might have +thought this pell-mell huddle of his words was explained, if not +excused, by the exigencies of the party pamphlet, which cannot wait. +But the same asyntactle disorder is equally found in the _History of +Britain_, which he had in hand for forty years. Nor is it only the +Miltonic sentence which is incoherent; the whole arrangement of his +topics is equally loose, disjointed, and desultory. His inspiration +comes from impulse. Had he stayed to chastise his emotional writing by +reason and the laws of logic, he would have deprived himself of the +sources of his strength. + +These serious faults are balanced by virtues of another kind. Putting +Bacon aside, the condensed force and poignant brevity of whose +aphoristic wisdom has no parallel in English, there is no other +prosaist who possesses anything like Milton's command over the +resources of our language. Milton cannot match the musical harmony and +exactly balanced periods of his predecessor Hooker. He is without +the power of varied illustration, and accumulation of ornamental +circumstance, possessed by his contemporary, Jeremy Taylor +(1613-1667). But neither of these great writers impresses the reader +with a sense of unlimited power such as we feel to reside in Milton. +Vast as is the wealth of magnificent words which he flings with both +hands carelessly upon the page, we feel that there is still much more +in reserve. + +The critics have observed (Collier's _Poetical Decameron_) that as +Milton advanced in life he gradually disused the compound words he +had been in the habit of making for himself. However this may be, his +words are the words of one who made a study of the language, as a +poet studies language, searching its capacities for the expression of +surging emotion. Jeremy Taylor's prose is poetical prose. Milton's +prose is not poetical prose, but a different thing, the prose of a +poet; not like Taylor's, loaded with imagery on the outside; but +coloured by imagination from within. Milton is the first English +writer who, possessing in the ancient models a standard of the effect +which could be produced by choice of words, set himself to the +conscious study of our native tongue with a firm faith in its as yet +undeveloped powers as an instrument of thought. + +The words in Milton's poems have been counted, and it appears that he +employs 8000, while Shakspeare's plays and poems yield about 15,000. +From this it might be inferred that the Miltonic vocabulary is only +half as rich as that of Shakspeare. But no inference can be founded +upon the absolute number of words used by any writer. We must know, +not the total of different words, but the _proportion_ of different +words to the whole of any writer's words. Now to furnish a list of +100 different words the English Bible requires 531 common words, +Shakspeare 164, Milton 135 only. This computation is founded on the +poems; it would be curious to have the same test tried upon the prose +writings, though no such test can be as trustworthy as the educated +ear of a listener to a continued reading. + +It is no part of a succinct biography, such as the present, to furnish +an account in detail of the various controversies of the time, as +Milton engaged in them. The reader will doubtless be content with the, +bare indication of the subjects on which he wrote. The whole number of +Milton's political pamphlets Is twenty-five. Of these, twenty-one are +written in English, and four in Latin, Of the _Tractate of Education_ +and the four divorce pamphlets something has been already said. Of the +remaining twenty, nine, or nearly half, relate to church government, +or ecclesiastical affairs; eight treat of the various crises of the +civil strife; and two are personal vindications of himself against one +of his antagonists. There remains one tract of which the subject is of +a more general and permanent nature, the best known of all the series, +_Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing, to the +Parliament of England_. The whole series of twenty-five extends over +a period of somewhat less than twenty years; the earliest, viz., _Of +Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, and the Causes that +hitherto have hindered it_, having been published in 1641; the latest, +entitled, _A ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth_, +coming out in March, 1660, after the torrent of royalism had set in, +which was to sweep away the men and the cause to which Milton had +devoted himself. Milton's pen thus accompanied the whole of the +Puritan revolution from the modest constitutional opposition in +which It commenced, through its unexpected triumph, to its crushing +overthrow by the royalist and clerical reaction. + +The autumn of 1641 brought with it a sensible lull in the storm of +revolutionary passion. Indeed, there began to appear all the symptoms +of a reaction, and of the formation of a solid conservative party, +likely to be strong enough to check, or even to suppress, the +movement. The impulse seemed to have spent itself, and a desire for +rest from political agitation began to steal over the nation. Autumn +and the harvest turn men's thoughts towards country occupations and +sports. The King went off to Scotland in August; the Houses adjourned +till the 20th October. The Scottish army had been paid off, and had +repassed the border; the Scottish commissioners and preachers had left +London. + +It was a critical moment for the Puritan party. Some very considerable +triumphs they had gained. The archenemy Strafford had been brought to +the block; Laud was in the tower; the leading members of Convocation, +bishops, deans, and archdeacons, had been heavily fined; the Star +Chamber and the High Commission Court had been abolished; the Stannary +and Forestal jurisdictions restrained. But the Puritan movement aimed +at far more than this. It was not only that the root-and-branch men +were pushing for a generally more levelling policy, but the whole +Puritan party was committed to a struggle with the hierarchy of the +Established Church. It was not so much that they demanded more and +more reform, with the growing appetite of revolution, but that as +long as bishops existed, nothing that had been wrested from them was +secure. The Puritans could not exist in safety side by side with +a church whose principle was that there was no church without the +apostolic succession. The abolition of episcopacy and the substitution +of the Presbyterian platform was, so it then seemed, a bare measure +of necessary precaution, and not merely the extravagant demand of +dissatisfied spirits. Add to this, that it was well understood by +those near enough to the principal actors in the drama, that the +concessions made by the Court had been easily made, because they could +be taken back, when the time should come, with equal ease. Even the +most moderate men, who were satisfied with the amount of reform +already obtained, must have trembled at its insecurity. The Puritan +leaders must have viewed with dismay the tendency in the nation +towards a reaction in favour of things as they were. + +It was upon this condition of the public mind that Milton persistently +poured pamphlet after pamphlet, successive vials of apocalyptic wrath. +He exhausts all the resources of rhetoric, and plays upon every note +in the gamut of public feeling; that he may rouse the apathetic, +confirm the wavering, dumbfound the malignant; where there was zeal, +to fan it into flame; where there was opposition, to sow and browbeat +it by indignant scorn and terrific denunciation. The first of these +manifestoes was (1) _Of Reformation touching Church Discipline_, of +which I have already spoken. This was immediately followed by (2) +_Of Prelaticall Episcopacy_. This tract was a reply, in form, to a +publication of Archbishop Usher. It was about the end of May, 1641, +that Usher had come forward on the breach with his _Judgment of Dr. +Rainolds touching the Original of Episcopacy_, Rainolds, who had been +President of Corpus (1598-1607), had belonged to the Puritan party in +his day, had refused a bishopric, and was known, like Usher himself, +to be little favourable to the exclusive claims of the high +prelatists. He was thus an unexceptionable witness to adduce in +favour of the apostolic origin of the distinction between bishop and +presbyter. Usher, in editing Rainolds' opinions, had backed them up +with all the additional citations which his vast reading could supply. + +Milton could not speak with the weight that attached to Usher, the +most learned Churchman of the age, who had spent eighteen years in +going through a complete course of fathers and councils. But, in the +first paragraph of his answer, Milton adroitly puts the controversy +upon a footing by which antiquarian research is put out of court. +Episcopacy is either of human or divine origin. If of human origin, it +may be either retained or abolished, as may be found expedient. If of +divine appointment, it must be proved to be so out of Scripture. If +this cannot be proved out of inspired Scripture, no accumulation of +merely human assertion of the point can be of the least authority. +Having thus shut out antiquity as evidence in the case, he proceeds +nevertheless to examine his opponent's authorities, and sets them +aside by a style of argument which has more of banter than of +criticism. + +One incident of this collision between Milton, young and unknown, and +the venerable prelate, whom he was assaulting with the rude wantonness +of untempered youth, deserves to be mentioned here. Usher had +incautiously included the Ignatian epistles among his authorities. +This laid the most learned man of the day at the mercy of an adversary +of less reading than himself. Milton, who at least knew so much +suspicion of the genuineness of these remains as Casaubon's +_Exercitations on Baronius_ and Vedelin's edition (Geneva, 1623) could +suggest, pounced upon this critical flaw, and delightedly denounced +in trenchant tones this "Perkin Warbeck of Ignatius," and the +"supposititious offspring of some dozen epistles." This rude shock it +was which set Usher upon a more careful examination of the Ignatian +question. The result was his well-known edition of Ignatius, printed +1642, though not published till 1644, in which he acknowledged the +total spuriousness of nine epistles, and the partial interpolation of +the other six. I have not noticed in Usher's _Prolegomena_ that he +alludes to Milton's onslaught. Nor, indeed, was he called upon to +do so in a scientific investigation, as Milton had brought no +contribution to the solution of the question beyond sound and fury. + +Of Milton's third pamphlet, entitled (3) _Animadversions on the +Remonstrants defence against Smectymnuus_, it need only be said that +it is a violent personal onfall upon Joseph Hall, bishop, first, of +Exeter and afterwards of Norwich. The bishop, by descending into the +arena of controversy, had deprived himself of the privilege which his +literary eminence should have secured to him. But nothing can excuse +or reconcile us to the indecent scurrility with which he is assailed +in Milton's pages, which reflect more discredit on him who wrote them, +than on him against whom they are written. + +The fifth pamphlet, called (5) _An Apology against a Pamphlet called +"A Modest Confutation, &c."_ (1642), is chiefly remarkable for a +defence of his own Cambridge career. A man who throws dirt, as Milton +did, must not be surprised if some of it comes back to him. A son of +Bishop Hall, coming forward as his father's champion and avenger, +had raked up a garbled version of Milton's quarrel with his tutor +Chappell, and by a further distortion, had brought it out in the shape +that, "after an inordinate and violent youth spent at the university," +Milton had been "vomited out thence." From the university this +"alchemist of slander" follows him to the city, and declares that +where Milton's morning haunts are, he wisses not, but that his +afternoons are spent in playhouses and bordelloes. Milton replies to +these random charges by a lengthy account of himself and his studious +habits. As the reader may expect a specimen of Milton's prose style, I +quote a part of this autobiographical paragraph:-- + +"I had my time, as others have who have good learning bestowed upon +them, to be sent to those places where the opinion was it might be +sooner attained; and, as the manner is, was not unstudied in those +authors which are most commended, whereof some were grave orators and +historians, whom methought I loved indeed, but as my age then was, so +I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the +schools are not scarce; whom both for the pleasing sound of their +numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, and most +agreeable to nature's part in me, and for their matter, which what +it is there be few who know not, I was so allowed to read, that no +recreation came to me better welcome.... Whence having observed them +to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest +to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to +love those high perfections which under one or other name they toot +to celebrate, I thought with myself by every instinct and presage of +nature which is not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to +this task might with such diligence as they used embolden me, and that +what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share, would herein best appear +and best value itself by how much more wisely and with more love of +virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent) the object of +not unlike praises.... Nor blame it in those years to propose to +themselves such a reward as the noblest dispositions above other +things in this life have sometimes preferred. Whereof not to be +sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross +and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. +For by the firm settling of these persuasions I became so much a +proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy +things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had +extolled, this effect it wrought with me, from that time forward their +art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all +preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never +write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying +sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not +after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not +be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, +ought himself to be a true poem, that is a composition and pattern of +the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises +of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the +experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy. + +"These reasonings together with a certain niceness of nature, an +honest haughtiness and self-esteem, either of what I was or what I +might be, which let envy call pride, and lastly that modesty, whereof, +though not in the title-page, yet here, I may be excused to make some +beseeming profession, all these uniting the supply of their natural +aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath +which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree to saleable +and unlawful prostitutions. + +"Next, for hear me out now, readers, that I may tell ye whither my +younger feet wandered, I betook me among those lofty fables and +romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood +founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over +all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he +should defend to the expence of his best blood, or of his life if it +so befel him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron. From whence +even then I learnt what a noble virtue chastity ever must be, to +the defence of which so many worthies by such a dear adventure of +themselves had sworn. And if I found in the story afterwards any of +them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of +the poet as that which is attributed to Homer to have written undecent +things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and +gentle spirit without that oath ought to be borne a knight, nor needed +to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, +to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm to serve and protect +the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even those books which +to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living, I +cannot think how unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many +incitements to the love and steadfast observation of virtue." + +This is one of the autobiographical cases in these pamphlets, which +are otherwise arid deserts of sand, scorched by the fire of extinct +passion. It may be asked why it is that a few men, Gibbon or Milton, +are indulged without challenge in talk about themselves, which would +be childish vanity or odious egotism in others. When a Frenchman +writes, "Nous avons tous, nous autres Français, des séduisantes +qualités"(Gaffarel), he is ridiculous. The difference is not merely +that we tolerate in a man of confessed superiority what would be +intolerable in an equal. This is true; but there is a further +distinction of moral quality in men's confessions. In Milton, as +in Gibbon, the gratification of self-love, which attends all +autobiography, is felt to be subordinated to a nobler intention. +The lofty conception which Milton formed of his vocation as a poet, +expands his soul and absorbs his personality. It is his office, and +not himself, which he magnifies. The details of his life and nurture +are important, not because they belong to him, but because he belongs, +by dedication, to a high and sacred calling. He is extremely jealous, +not of his own reputation, but of the credit which is due to lofty +endeavour. We have only to compare Milton's magnanimous assumption of +the first place with the paltry conceit with which, in the following +age of Dryden and Pope, men spoke of themselves as authors, to see +the wide difference between the professional vanity of successful +authorship and the proud consciousness of a prophetic mission. Milton +leads a dedicated life, and has laid down for himself the law that +"he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in +laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem." + +If Milton had not been the author of _Lycidas_ and _Paradise Lost_, +his political pamphlets would have been as forgotten as are the +thousand civil war tracts preserved in the Thomason collection in +the Museum, or have served, at most, as philological landmarks. One, +however, of his prose tracts has continued to enjoy some degree of +credit down to the present time, for its matter as well as for its +words, _Areopagitica_. This tract belongs to the year 1644, the most +fertile year in Milton's life, as in it he "brought out two of his +divorce tracts, the _Tractate of Education_, and the _Areopagitica_. +As Milton's moving principle was not any preconceived system of +doctrine but the passion for liberty in general, it was natural that +he should plead, when occasion called, for liberty of the press, among +others. The occasion was one personal to himself. + +It is well known that, early in the history of printing, governments +became jealous of this new instrument for influencing opinion. In +England, in 1556, under Mary, the Stationers' Company was invested +with legal privileges, having the twofold object of protecting the +book trade and controlling writers. All publications were required, to +be registered in the register of the company. No persons could set +up a press without a licence, or print anything which had not been +previously approved by some official censor. The court, which had +come to be known as the court of Star-chamber, exercised criminal +jurisdiction over offenders, and even issued its own decrees for the +regulation of printing. The arbitrary action of this court had no +small share in bringing about the resistance to Charles I. But the +fall of the royal authority did not mean the emancipation of the +press. The Parliament had no intention of letting go the control which +the monarchy had exercised; the incidence of the coercion was to be +shifted from themselves upon their opponents. The Star-chamber was +abolished, but its powers of search and seizure were transferred to +the Company of Stationers. Licensing was to go on as before, but to be +exercised by special commissioners, instead of by the Archbishop and +the Bishop of London. Only whereas, before, contraband had consisted +of Presbyterian books, henceforward it was Catholic and Anglican books +which would be suppressed. + +Such was not Milton's idea of the liberty of thought and speech in a +free commonwealth. He had himself written for the Presbyterians four +unlicensed pamphlets. It was now open to him to write any number, and +to get them licensed, provided they were written on the same side. +This was not liberty, as he had learned it in his classics, "ubi +sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet." Over and above this +encroachment on the liberty of the free citizen, it so happened that +at this moment Milton himself was concerned to ventilate an +opinion which was not Presbyterian, and had no chance of passing a +Presbyterian licenser. His _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ was +just ready for press when the ordinance of 1643 came into operation. +He published it without licence and without printer's name, in +defiance of the law, and awaited the consequences. There were no +consequences. He repeated the offence in a second edition in February, +1644, putting his name now (the first edition had been anonymous), and +dedicating it to the very Parliament whose ordinance he was setting +at nought. This time the Commons, stirred up by a petition from +the Company of Stationers, referred the matter to the committee of +printing. It went no further. Either it was deemed inexpedient +to molest so sound a Parliamentarian as Milton, or Cromwell's +"accommodation resolution" of September 13, 1644, opened the eyes of +the Presbyterian zealots to the existence in the kingdom of a new, and +much wider, phase of opinion, which ominously threatened the compact +little edifice of Presbyterian truth that they had been erecting with +a profound conviction of its exclusive orthodoxy. + +The occurrence had been sufficient to give a new direction to Milton's +thoughts. Regardless of the fact that his plea for liberty in marriage +had fallen upon deaf ears, he would plead for liberty of speech. The +_Areopagitica, for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing_, came out in +November, 1644, an unlicensed, unregistered publication, without +printer's or bookseller's name. It was cast in the form of a speech +addressed to the Parliament. The motto was taken from Euripides, and +printed in the original Greek, which was not, when addressed to the +Parliament of 1644, the absurdity which it would be now. The title is +less appropriate, being borrowed from the _Areopagitic Discourse_ of +Isocrates, between which and Milton's _Speech_ there is no resemblance +either in subject or style. All that the two productions have in +common is their form. They are both unspoken orations, written to the +address of a representative assembly--the one to the Boulé or Senate +of Athens, the other to the Parliament of England. + +Milton's _Speech_ is in his own best style; a copious flood of +majestic eloquence, the outpouring of a noble soul with a divine +scorn of narrow dogma and paltry aims. But it is a mere pamphlet, +extemporised in, at most, a month or two, without research or special +knowledge, with no attempt to ascertain general principles, and more +than Milton's usual disregard of method. A jurist's question, is here +handled by a rhetorician. He has preached a noble and heart-stirring +sermon on his text, but the problem for the legislator remains where +it was. The vagueness and confusion of the thoughts finds a vehicle +in language which is too often overcrowded and obscure. I think the +_Areopagitica_ has few or no offences against taste; on the other +hand, it has few or none of those grand passages which redeem the +scurrility of his political pamphlets. The passage in which Milton's +visit to Galileo "grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition," is +mentioned, is often quoted for its biographical interest; and the +terse dictum, "as good almost kill a man as kill a good book," has +passed into a current axiom. A paragraph at the close, where he hints +that the time may be come to suppress the suppressors, intimates, but +so obscurely as to be likely to escape notice, that Milton had already +made up his mind that a struggle with the Presbyterian party was to be +the sequel of the overthrow of the Royalists. He has not yet arrived +at the point he will hereafter reach, of rejecting the very idea of +a minister of religion, but he is already aggrieved by the implicit +faith which the Puritan laity, who had cast out bishops, were +beginning to bestow upon their pastor; "a factor to whose care and +credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs." +Finally, it must be noted, that Milton, though he had come to see +round Presbyterianism, had not, in 1644, shaken off all dogmatic +profession. His toleration of opinion was far from complete. He +would call in the intervention of the executioner in the case of +"mischievous and libellous books," and could not bring himself to +contemplate the toleration of Popery and open superstition, "which as +it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be +extirpate; provided first that all charitable and compassionate means +be used to win and gain the weak and misled." + +The _Areopagitica_, as might be expected, produced no effect upon the +legislation of the Long Parliament, of whom (says Hallam) "very +few acts of political wisdom or courage are recorded." Individual +licensers became more lax in the performance of the duty, but this is +reasonably to be ascribed to the growing spirit of independency--a +spirit which was incompatible with any embargo on the utterance of +private opinion. A curious epilogue to the history of this publication +is the fact, first brought to light by Mr. Masson, that the author of +the _Areopagitica_, at a later time, acted himself in the capacity of +licenser. It was in 1651, under the Commonwealth, Marchmont Needham +being editor of the weekly paper called _Mercurius Politicus_, that +Milton was associated with him as his censor or supervising editor. +Mr. Masson conjectures, with some probability, that the leading +articles of the _Mercurius_, during part of the year 1651, received +touches from Milton's hand. But this was, after all, rather in the +character of editor, whose business it is to see that nothing improper +goes into the paper, than in that of press licenser in the sense in +which the _Areopagitica_ had denounced it. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +BIOGRAPHICAL. 1640--1649. + + +In September, 1645, Milton left the garden-house in Aldersgate, for +a larger house in Barbican, in the same neighbourhood, but a little +further from the city gate, i.e. more in the country. The larger house +was, perhaps, required for the accommodation of his pupils (see above, +p. 44), but it served to shelter his wife's family, when they were +thrown upon the world by the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646. In +this Barbican house Mr. Powell died at the end of that year. Milton +had been promised with his wife a portion of 1000 l.; but Mr. Powell's +affairs had long been in a very embarrassed condition, and now by the +consequences of delinquency that condition had become one of absolute +ruin. Great pains have been bestowed by Mr. Masson in unravelling the +entanglement of the Powell accounts. The data which remain are ample, +and we cannot but feel astonished at the accuracy with which our +national records, in more important matters so defective, enable us +to set out a debtor and creditor balance of the estate of a private +citizen, who died more than 200 years ago. But the circumstances +are peculiarly intricate, and we are still unable to reconcile Mr, +Powell's will with the composition records, both of which are extant. +As a compounding delinquent, his fine, assessed at the customary rate +of two years' income, was fixed by the commissioners at 180 l. The +commissioners must have, therefore, been satisfied that his income did +not exceed 90 l. a year. Yet by his will of date December 30, 1646, he +leaves his estate of Forest Hill, the annual value of which alone far +exceeded 90 l., to his eldest son. This property is not mentioned +in the inventory of his estate, real and personal, laid before the +commissioners, sworn to by the delinquent, and by them accepted. The +possible explanation is that the Forest Hill property had really +passed into the possession, by foreclosure, of the mortgagee, Sir +Robert Pye, who sate for Woodstock in the Long Parliament, but that +Mr. Powell, making his will on his deathbed, pleased himself with the +fancy of leaving his son and heir an estate which was no longer his to +dispose of. Putting Forest Hill out of the account, it would appear +that the sequestrators had dealt somewhat harshly with Mr. Powell; for +they had included in their estimate one doubtful asset of 500 l., and +one non-existent of 400 l. This last item was a stock of timber stated +to be at Forest Hill, but which had really been appropriated without +payment by the Parliamentarians, and part of it voted by Parliament +itself towards repair of the church in the staunch Puritan town of +Banbury. + +The upshot of the whole transaction is that, in satisfaction of his +claim of 1500 l. (1000 l. his wife's dower, 500 l. an old loan of +1627), Milton came into possession of some property at Wheatley. This +property, consisting of the tithes of Wheatley, certain cottages, +and three and a half yard lands, had in the time of the disturbances +produced only 40 l. a year. But as the value of all property improved +when, the civil war came to an end, Milton found the whole could now +be let for 80 l. But then out of this he had to pay Mr. Powell's +composition, reduced to 130 l. on Milton's petition, and the widow's +jointure, computed at 26 l. 13 s. 4 d. per annum. What of income +remained after these disbursements he might apply towards repaying +himself the old loan of 1627. This was all Milton ever saw of the 1000 +l. which Mr. Powell, with the high-flying magnificence of a cavalier +who knew he was ruined, had promised as his daughter's portion. + +Mr. Powell's death was followed in less than three months by that of +John Milton, senior. He died in the house in Barbican, and the entry, +"John Milton, gentleman, 15 (March)," among the burials in 1646, +is still to be seen in the register of the parish of St. Giles's, +Cripplegate. A host of eminent men have traced the first impulse of +their genius to their mother. Milton always acknowledged with just +gratitude that it was to his father's discerning taste and fostering +care, that he owed the encouragement of his studies, and the leisure +which rendered them possible. He has registered this gratitude in both +prose and verse. The Latin hexameters, "Ad patrem," written at Horton, +are inspired by a feeling far beyond commonplace filial piety, and a +warmth which is rare indeed in neo-Latin versification. And when, in +his prose pamphlets, he has occasion to speak of himself, he does not +omit the acknowledgment of "the ceaseless diligence and care of my +father, whom God recompense." (_Reason of Church Government_.) + +After the death of his father, being now more at ease in his +circumstances, he gave up taking pupils, and quitted the large house +in Barbican for a smaller in High Holborn, opening backwards into +Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. This removal was about Michaelmas, 1647. + +During this period, 1639--1649, while his interests were engaged by +the all-absorbing events of the civil strife, he wrote no poetry, +or none deserving the name. All artists have intervals of +non-productiveness, usually caused by exhaustion. This was not +Milton's case. His genius was not his master, nor could it pass, like +that of Leonardo da Vinci, unmoved through the most tragic scenes. He +deliberately suspended it at the call of what he believed to be duty +to his country. His unrivalled power of expression was placed at the +service of a passionate political conviction. This prostitution of +faculty avenged itself; for when he did turn to poetry, his strength +was gone from him. The period is chiefly marked, by sonnets, not many, +one in a year, or thereabouts. That _On the religious memory of Mrs. +Catherine Thomson_, in 1646, is the lowest point touched by Milton in +poetry, for his metrical psalms do not deserve the name. + +The sonnet, or Elegy on Mrs. Catherine Thomson in the form of a +sonnet, though in poetical merit not distinguishable from the +average religious verse of the Caroline age, has an interest for the +biographer. It breathes a holy calm that is in sharp contrast with the +angry virulence of the pamphlets, which were being written at this +very time by the same pen. Amid his intemperate denunciations of +his political and ecclesiastical foes, it seems that Milton did not +inwardly forfeit the peace which passeth all understanding. He had +formerly said himself (_Doctrine and Disc._), "nothing more than +disturbance of mind suspends us from approaching to God." Now, out of +all the clamour and the bitterness of the battle of the sects, he can +retire and be alone with his heavenly aspirations, which have lost +none of their ardour by having laid aside all their sectarianism. His +genius has forsaken him, but his soul still glows with the fervour +of devotion. And even of this sonnet we may say what Ellis says of +Catullus, that Milton never ceases to be a poet, even when his words +are most prosaic. + +The sonnet (xv.) _On the Lord-General Fairfax, at the siege of +Colchester_, written in 1648, is again a manifesto of the writer's +political feelings, nobly uttered, and investing party with a +patriotic dignity not unworthy of the man, Milton. It is a hortatory +lyric, a trumpet-call to his party in the moment of victory to +remember the duties which that victory imposed upon them. It is not +without the splendid resonance of the Italian canzone. But it can +scarcely be called poetry, expressing, as it does, facts directly, and +not indirectly through their imaginative equivalents. Fairfax was, +doubtless, well worthy that Milton should have commemorated him in a +higher strain. Of Fairfax's eminent qualities the sonnet only dwells +on two, his personal valour, which had been tried in many fights--he +had been three times dangerously wounded in the Yorkshire +campaign--and his superiority to sordid interests. Of his generalship, +in which he was second to Cromwell only, and of his love of arts and +learning, nothing is said, though the last was the passion of his +life, for which at forty he renounced ambition. Perhaps in 1648 +Milton, who lived a very retired life, did not know of these tastes, +and had not heard that it was by Fairfax's care that the Bodleian +library was saved from wreck on the surrender of Oxford in 1646. And +it was not till later, years after the sonnet was written, that the +same Fairfax, "whose name in arms through Europe rings," became a +competitor of Milton in the attempt to paraphrase the Psalms in metre. + +Milton's paraphrase of the Psalms belongs to history, but to the +history of psalmody, not that of poetry. At St. Paul's School, at +fifteen, the boy had turned two psalms, the 114th and the 136th, by +way of exercise. That in his day of plenary inspiration, Milton, who +disdained Dryden as "a rhymist but no poet," and has recorded his own +impatience with the "drawling versifiers," should have undertaken +to grind down the noble antistrophic lyrics of the Hebrew bard +into ballad rhymes for the use of Puritan worship, would have been +impossible. But the idea of being useful to his country had acquired +exclusive possession of his mind. Even his faculty of verse should +be employed in the good cause. If Parliament had set him the task, +doubtless he would have willingly undertaken it, as Corneille, in the +blindness of Catholic obedience, versified the _Imitatio Christi_ at +the command of the Jesuits. Milton was not officially employed, but +voluntarily took up the work. The Puritans were bent upon substituting +a new version of the Davidic Psalms for that of Sternhold and Hopkins, +for no other reason than that the latter formed part of the hated Book +of Common Prayer. The Commons had pronounced in favour of a version by +one of their own members, the staunch Puritan M.P. for Truro, Francis +Rouse. The Lords favoured a rival book, and numerous other claimants +were before the public. Dissatisfied with any of these attempts, +Milton would essay himself. In 1648 he turned nine psalms, and +recurring to the task in 1653, "did into verse" eight more. He thought +these specimens worth preserving, and annexing to the volume of his +poems which he published himself in 1673. As this doggerel continues +to encumber each succeeding edition of the _Poetical Works_, it is as +well that Milton did not persevere with his experiment and produce a +complete Psalter. He prudently abandoned a task in which success is +impossible. A metrical psalm, being a compromise between the psalm and +the hymn, like other compromises, misses, rather than combines, the +distinctive excellences of the things united. That Milton should ever +have attempted what poetry forbids, is only another proof how entirely +at this period more absorbing motives had possession of his mind, and +overbore his poetical judgment. It is a coincidence worth remembering +that Milton's contemporary, Lord Clarendon, was at this very time +solacing his exile at Madrid by composing, not a version but a +commentary upon the Psalms, "applying those devotions to the troubles +of this time." + +Yet all the while that he was thus unfaithful in practice to his art, +it was poetry that possessed his real affections, and the reputation +of a poet which formed his ambition. It was a temporary separation, +and not a divorce, which he designed. In each successive pamphlet he +reiterates his undertaking to redeem his pledge of a great work, as +soon as liberty shall be consolidated in the realm. Meanwhile, as an +earnest of what should be hereafter, he permitted the publication of a +collection of his early poems. + +This little volume of some 200 pages, rude in execution as it is, +ranks among the highest prizes of the book collector, very few copies +being extant, and those mostly in public libraries. It appeared in +1645, and owed its appearance, not to the vanity of the author, but +to the zeal of a publisher. Humphrey Moseley, at the sign, of the +Prince's Arms, in St. Paul's Churchyard, suggested the collection to +Milton, and undertook the risk of it, though knowing, as he says +in the prefixed address of The Stationer to the Reader, that "the +slightest pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of +learnedest men." It may create some surprise that, in 1645, there +should have been any public in England for a volume of verse. Naseby +had been fought in June, Philiphaugh in September, Fairfax and +Cromwell were continuing their victorious career in the west, Chester, +Worcester, and the stronghold of Oxford, alone holding out for the +King. It was clear that the conflict was decided in favour of the +Parliament, but men's minds must have been strung to a pitch of +intense expectation as to what kind of settlement was to come. Yet, at +the very crisis of the civil strife, we find a London publisher able +to bring out the Poems of Waller (1644), and sufficiently encouraged +by their reception to follow them up, in the next year, with the Poems +of Mr. John Milton. Are we warranted in inferring that a finer public +was beginning to loathe the dreary theological polemic of which it had +had a surfeit, and turned to a book of poetry as that which was +most unlike the daily garbage, just as a later public absorbed five +thousand copies of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ in the year of +Austerlitz? One would like to know who were the purchasers of +Milton and Waller, when the cavalier families were being ruined by +confiscations and compositions, and Puritan families would turn with +pious horror from the very name of a Mask. + +Milton was himself editor of his own volume, and prefixed to it, again +out of Virgil's Eclogues, the characteristic motto, "Baccare frontem +Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua _futuro_," indicating that his +poetry was all to come. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP. + + +The Crown having fallen on January 30, 1649, and the House of Lords by +the vote of February 6 following, the sovereign power in England was +for the moment in the hands of that fragment of the Long Parliament, +which remained after the various purges and expulsions to which it had +been subjected. Some of the excluded members were allowed to return, +and by occasional new elections in safe boroughs the number of members +was raised to one hundred and fifty, securing an average attendance of +about seventy. The future government of the nation was declared to be +by way of a republic, and the writs ran in the name of the Keepers +of the Liberty of England, by authority of Parliament. But the real +centre of power was the Council of State, a body of forty-one members, +nominated for a period of twelve months, according to a plan of +constitution devised by the army leaders. In the hands of this +republican Council was concentrated a combination of power such as had +never been wielded by any English monarch. But, though its attribution +of authority was great, its exercise of the powers lodged with it was +hampered by differences among its members, and the disaffection of +various interests and parties. The Council of State contained most of +the notable statesmen of the Parliamentary party, and had before it +a vast task in reorganizing the administration of England, in the +conduct of an actual war in Ireland, a possible war in Scotland, and +in the maintenance of the honour of the republic in its relations with +foreign princes. + +The Council of State prepared the business for its consideration +through special committees for special departments of the public +service. The Committee for Foreign Affairs consisted of Whitelocke, +Vane, Lord Lisle, Lord Denbigh, Mr. Marten, Mr. Lisle. A secretary was +required to translate despatches, both those which were sent out, and +those which were received. Nothing seems more natural than that the +author of the _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, who was at once a +staunch Parliamentarian, an accomplished Latin scholar, and conversant +with more than one of the spoken languages of the Continent, should be +thought of for the office. Yet so little was Milton personally known, +living as he did the life of a retired student, that it was the +accident of his having the acquaintance of one of the new Council to +which he owed the appointment. + +The post was offered him, but would he accept it? He had never ceased +to revolve in his mind subjects capable of poetical treatment, and +to cherish his own vocation as the classical poet of the English +language. Peace had come, and leisure was within his reach. He was +poor, but his wants were simple, and he had enough wherewith to meet +them. Already, in 1649, unmistakable symptoms threatened his sight, +and warned him of the necessity of the most rigid economy in the +use of the eyes. The duties that he was now asked to undertake were +indefinite already in amount, and would doubtless extend themselves if +zealously discharged. + +But the temptation was strong, and he did not resist it. The increase +of income was, doubtless, to Milton the smallest among the inducements +now offered him. He had thought it a sufficient and an honourable +employment to serve his country with his pen as a volunteer. Here was +an offer to become her official, authorised servant, and to bear a +part, though a humble part, in the great work of reorganisation which +was now to be attempted. Above all other allurements to a retired +student, unversed in men, and ready to idealise character, was the +opportunity of becoming at once personally acquainted with all the +great men of the patriotic party, whom his ardent imagination had +invested with heroic qualities. The very names of Fairfax, Vane, and +Cromwell, called up in him emotions for which prose was an inadequate +vehicle. Nor was it only that in the Council itself he would be +in daily intercourse with such men as Henry Marten, Hutchinson, +Whitelocke, Harrington, St. John, Ludlow, but his position would +introduce him at once to all the members of the House who were worth +knowing. It was not merely a new world; it was _the_ world which was +here opened for the first time to Milton. And we must remember that, +all scholar as he was, Milton was well convinced of the truth that +there are other sources of knowledge besides books. He had himself +spent "many studious and contemplative years in the search of +religious and civil knowledge," yet he knew that, for a mind large +enough to "take in a general survey of humane things," it was +necessary to know-- + + The world,... her glory, + Empires and monarchs, and their radiant courts, + Best school of best experience. + + _P.R._ iii. 237. + +He had repeatedly, as if excusing his political interludes, renewed +his pledge to devote all his powers to poetry as soon, as they +should be fully ripe. To complete his education as a poet, he wanted +initiation into affairs. Here was an opening far beyond any he had +ever dreamed of. The sacrifice of time and precious eyesight which he +was to make was costly, but it was not pure waste; it would be partly +returned to him in a ripened experience in this + + Insight + In all things to greatest actions lead, + +He accepted the post at once without hesitation. On March 13, 1649, +the Committee for Foreign Affairs was directed to make the offer to +him; on March 15, he attended at Whitehall to be admitted to office. +Well would it have been both for his genius and his fame if he had +declined it. His genius might have reverted to its proper course, +while he was in the flower of age, with eyesight still available, and +a spirit exalted by the triumph of the good cause. His fame would +have been saved from the degrading incidents of the contention with +Salmasius and Morus, and from being tarnished by the obloquy of the +faction which he fought, and which conquered him. No man can with +impunity insult and trample upon his fellow-man, even in the best +of causes. Especially if he be an artist, he makes it impossible to +obtain equitable appreciation of his work. + +So far as Milton reckoned upon a gain in experience from his +secretaryship, he doubtless reaped it. Such a probation could not be +passed without solidifying the judgment, and correcting its tendency +to error. And this school of affairs, which is indispensable for +the historian, may also be available for the poet. Yet it would be +difficult to point in Milton's subsequent poetry to any element which +the poet can be thought to have imbibed from the foreign secretary. +Where, as in Milton's two epics, and _Samson Agonistes_, the +personages are all supernatural or heroic, there is no room for the +employment of knowledge of the world. Had Milton written comedy, like +Molière, he might have said with Molière after he had been introduced +at court, "Je n'ai plus que faire d'étudier Plaute et Terence; je n'ai +qu'à étudier le monde." + +The office into which Milton was now inducted is called in the Council +books that of "Secretary for foreign tongues." Its duties were chiefly +the translation of despatches from, and to, foreign governments. The +degree of estimation in which the Latin secretary was held, may be +measured by the amount of salary assigned him. For while the English +chief Secretary had a salary of 730 l. (= 2200 l. of our day), the +Latin Secretary was paid only 288 l. 13s. 6d. (= 900 l.). For this, +not very liberal pay, he was told that all his time was to be at the +disposal of the government. Lincoln's Inn Fields was too far off for a +servant of the Council who might have to attend meetings at seven in +the morning. He accordingly migrated to Charing Cross, now become +again Charing without the cross, this work of art having been an early +(1647) victim of religious barbarism. In November he was accommodated +with chambers in Whitehall. But from these he was soon ousted by +claimants more considerable or more importunate, and in 1651 he +removed to "a pretty garden-house" in Petty France, in Westminster, +next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park. +The house was extant till 1877, when it disappeared, the last of +Milton's many London residences. It had long ceased to look into St. +James's Park, more than one row of houses, encroachments upon the +public park, having grown up between. The garden-house had become a +mere ordinary street house in York-street, only distinguished from the +squalid houses on either side of it by a tablet affixed by Bentham, +inscribed "sacred to Milton, prince of poets." Petty France lost its +designation in the French Revolution, in obedience to the childish +petulance which obliterates the name of any one who may displease you +at the moment, and became one of the seventeen York-streets of the +metropolis. Soon after the re-baptism of the street, Milton's house +was occupied by William Hazlitt, who rented it of Bentham. Milton had +lived in it for nine years, from 1651 till a few weeks before the +Restoration. Its nearness to Whitehall where the Council sat, was less +a convenience than a necessity. + +For Milton's life now became one of close attention, and busy service. +As Latin secretary, and Weckherlin's successor, indeed, his proper +duties were only those of a clerk or translator. But his aptitude +for business of a literary kind soon drew on him a great variety of +employment. The demand for a Latin translation of a despatch was not +one of frequent occurrence. The Letters of the Parliament, and of +Oliver and Richard, Protectors, which are, intrusively, printed among +Milton's works, are but one hundred and thirty-seven in all. This +number is spread over ten years, being at the rate of about fourteen +per year; most of them are very short. For the purposes of a biography +of Milton, it is sufficient to observe, that the dignified attitude +which the Commonwealth took up towards foreign powers lost none of its +elevation in being conveyed in Miltonic Latin. Whether satisfaction +for the murder of an envoy is to be extorted from the arrogant court +of Madrid, or an apology is to be offered to a humble count of +Oldenburg for delay in issuing a salva-guardia which had been +promised, the same equable dignity of expression is maintained, +equally remote from crouching before the strong, and hectoring the +weak. + +His translations were not all the duties of the new secretary. He must +often serve as interpreter at audiences of foreign envoys. He must +superintend the semi-official organ, the _Mercurius Politicus_. +He must answer the manifesto of the Presbyterians of Ireland. The +_Observations_ on the peace of Kilkenny are Milton's composition, but +from instructions. By the peace the Irish had obtained home rule in +its widest extent, release from the oath of supremacy, and the right +to tie their ploughs to the tail of the horse. The same peace also +conceded to them the militia, a trust which Charles I. had said he +would not devolve on the Parliament of England, "not for an hour!" +Milton is indignant that these indulgences, which had been refused to +their obedience, should have been extorted by their rebellion, and +the massacre of "200,000 Protestants". This is an exaggeration of a +butchery sufficiently tragic in its real proportions, and in a later +tract (_Eikonoklastes_) he reduces it to 154,000. Though the +savage Irish are barbarians, uncivilised and uncivilisable, the +_Observations_ distinctly affirm the new principle of toleration. +Though popery be a superstition, the death of all true religion, still +conscience is not within the cognisance of the magistrate. The civil +sword is to be employed against civil offences only. In adding that +the one exception to this toleration is atheism, Milton is careful to +state this limitation as being the toleration professed by Parliament, +and not as his private opinion. + +So well satisfied were the Council with their secretary's +_Observations_ on the peace of Kilkenny, that they next imposed upon +him a far more important labour, a reply to the _Eikon Basiliké_. The +execution of Charles I. was not an act of vengeance, but a measure of +public safety. If, as Hallam affirms, there mingled in the motives of +the managers any strain of personal ill-will, this was merged in the +necessity of securing, themselves from the vengeance of the King, and +what they had gained from being taken back. They were alarmed by +the reaction which had set in, and had no choice but to strengthen +themselves by a daring policy. But the first effect of the removal of +the King by violence was to give a powerful stimulus to the reaction +already in progress. The groan, which burst from the spectators before +Whitehall on January 30, 1649, was only representative of the thrill +of horror which ran through England and Scotland in the next ten days. +This feeling found expression in a book entitled "_Eikon Basiliké_, +the portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitude and sufferings." +The book was, it should seem, composed by Dr. Gauden, but professed +to be an authentic copy of papers written by the King. It is possible +that Gauden may have had in his hands some written scraps of the +King's meditations. If he had such, he only used them as hints to work +upon. Gauden was a churchman whom his friends might call liberal, +and his enemies time-serving. He was a churchman of the stamp of +Archbishop Williams, and preferred bishops and the Common-prayer to +presbyters and extempore sermons, but did not think the difference +between the two of the essence of religion. In better times Gauden +would have passed for broad, though his latitudinarianism was more the +result of love of ease than of philosophy. Though a royalist he sat in +the Westminster Assembly, and took the covenant, for which compliance +he nearly lost the reward which, after the Restoration, became his +due. Like the university-bred men of his day, Gauden was not a man of +ideas, but of style. In the present instance the idea was supplied +by events. The saint and martyr, the man of sorrows, praying for +his murderers, the King, who renounced an earthly kingdom to gain +a heavenly, and who in return for his benefits received from an +unthankful people a crown of thorns--this was the theme supplied to +the royalist advocate. Poet's imagination had never invented one more +calculated to touch the popular heart. This _imitatio Christi_ to +which every private Christian theoretically aspires, had been realised +by a true prince upon an actual scaffold with a graceful dignity of +demeanour, of which it may be said, that nothing in life became him +like the leaving it. + +This moving situation Gauden, no mean stylist, set out in the best +academical language of the period. Frigid and artificial it may read +now, but the passion and pity, which is not in the book, was supplied +by the readers of the time. And men are not dainty as to phrase when +they meet with an expression of their own sentiments. The readers of +_Eikon Basilike_--and forty-seven editions were necessary to supply +the demand of a population of eight millions--attributed to the pages +of the book emotions raised in themselves by the tragic catastrophe. +They never doubted that the meditations were those of the royal +martyr, and held the book, in the words of Sir Edward Nicholas, for +"the most exquisite, pious, and princely piece ever written." The +Parliament thought themselves called upon to put forth a reply. If one +book could cause such a commotion of spirits, another book could allay +it--the ordinary illusion of those who do not consider that the vogue +of a printed appeal depends, not on the contents of the appeal, but on +a predisposition of the public temper. + +Selden, the most learned man, not only of his party, but of +Englishmen, was first thought of, but the task was finally assigned +to the Latin Secretary. Milton's ready pen completed the answer, +_Eikonoklastes_, a quarto of 242 pages, before October, 1649. It +is, like all answers, worthless as a book. Eikonoklastes, the +Image-breaker, takes the Image, Eikon, paragraph by paragraph, turning +it round, and asserting the negative. To the Royalist view of the +points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, +which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of +originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone +of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always +unbecoming, but which at this moment was grossly indecent. + +Milton must, however, be acquitted of one charge which has been made +against him, viz., that he taunts the king with his familiarity with +Shakespeare. The charge rests on a misunderstanding. In quoting +Richard III. in illustration of his own meaning, Milton, says, "I +shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the King might be less +conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of +these his solitudes, William Shakespeare." Though not an overt gibe, +there certainly lurks an insinuation to Milton's Puritan readers, to +whom stage plays were an abomination--an unworthy device of rhetoric, +as appealing to a superstition in others which the writer himself does +not share. In Milton's contemptuous reference to Sidney's _Arcadia_ as +a vain amatorious poem, we feel that the finer sense of the author of +_L'Allegro_ has suffered from immersion in the slough of religious and +political faction. + +Gauden, raking up material from all quarters, had inserted in his +compilation a prayer taken from the _Arcadia_. Milton mercilessly +works this topic against his adversary. It is surprising that this +plagiarism from so well-known a book as the _Arcadia_ should not have +opened Milton's eyes to the unauthentic character of the _Eikon_. He +alludes, indeed, to a suspicion which was abroad that one of the royal +chaplains was a secret coadjutor. But he knew nothing of Gauden at the +time of writing the _Eikonoklastes_, and probably he never came to +know anything. The secret of the authorship of the _Eikon_ was well +kept, being known only to a very few persons--the two royal brothers, +Bishop Morley, the Earl of Bristol, and Clarendon. These were all safe +men, and Gauden was not likely to proclaim himself an impostor. He +pleaded his authorship, however, as a claim to preferment at the +Restoration, when the church spoils came to be partitioned among +the conquerors, and he received the bishopric of Exeter. A +bishopric--because less than the highest preferment could not +be offered to one whose pen had done such signal service; and +Exeter--because the poorest see (then valued at 500 l. a year) was good +enough for a man who had taken the covenant and complied with the +usurping government. By ceaseless importunity the author of the _Eikon +Basilike_ obtained afterwards the see of Worcester, while the portion +of the author of _Eikonoklastes_ was poverty, infamy, and calumny. A +century after Milton's death it was safe for the most popular writer +of the day to say that the prayer from the _Arcadia_ had been +interpolated in the _Eikon_ by Milton himself, and then by him charged +upon the King as a plagiarism (Johnson, _Lives of the Poets_.) + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +MILTON AND SALMASIUS.--BLINDNESS. + + +The mystery which long surrounded the authorship of _Eikon Basilike_ +lends a literary interest to Milton's share in that controversy, +which does not belong to his next appearance in print. Besides, his +pamphlets against Salmasius and Morus are written in Latin, and to +the general reader in this country and in America inaccessible in +consequence. In Milton's day it was otherwise; the widest circle of +readers could only be reached through Latin. For this reason, when +Charles II. wanted a public vindication of his father's memory, it was +indispensable that it should be composed in that language. The _Eikon_ +was accordingly turned into Latin, by one of the royal chaplains, +Earle, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. But this was not enough; a +defence in form was necessary, an _Apologia Socratis_, such as Plato +composed for his master after his death. It must not only be written +in Latin, but in such Latin as to ensure its being read. + +In 1649 Charles II. was living at the Hague, and it so happened that +the man, who was in the highest repute in all Europe as a Latinist, +was professor at the neighbouring university of Leyden. Salmasius +(Claude de Saumaise) was commissioned to prepare a manifesto, which +should be at once a vindication of Charles's memory, and an indictment +against the regicide government. Salmasius was a man of enormous +reading and no judgment. He says of himself that he wrote Latin more +easily than his mother-tongue (French). And his Latin was all the +more readable because it was not classical or idiomatic. With all his +reading--and Isaac Casaubon had said of him when in his teens that he +had incredible erudition--he was still, at sixty, quite unacquainted +with public affairs, and had neither the politician's tact necessary +to draw a state paper as Clarendon would have drawn it, nor the +literary tact which had enabled Erasmus to command the ear of the +public. Salmasius undertook his task as a professional advocate, +though without pay, and Milton accepted the duty of replying as +advocate for the Parliament, also without reward; he was fighting for +a cause which was not another's but his own. + +Salmasius' _Defensio regia_--that was the title of his book--reached +this country before the end of 1649. The Council of State, in very +unnecessary alarm, issued a prohibition. On 8th January, 1650, the +Council ordered "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the +book of Salmasius." Early in March, 1651, Milton's answer, entitled +_Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_, was out. + +Milton was as much above Salmasius in mental power as he was inferior +to him in extent of book knowledge. But the conditions of retort which +he had chosen to accept neutralised this superiority. His greater +power was spent in a greater force of invective. Instead of setting +out the case of the Parliament in all the strength of which it was +capable, Milton is intent upon tripping up Salmasius, contradicting +him, and making him odious or ridiculous. He called his book a +_Defence of the People of England_; but when he should have been +justifying his clients from the charges of rebellion and regicide +before the bar of Europe, Milton is bending all his invention upon +personalities. He exaggerates the foibles of Salmasius, his vanity, +and the vanity of Madame de Saumaise, her ascendancy over her husband, +his narrow pedantry, his ignorance of everything but grammar and +words. He exhausts the Latin vocabulary of abuse to pile up every +epithet of contumely and execration on the head of his adversary. It +but amounts to calling Salmasius fool and knave through a couple of +hundred pages, till the exaggeration of the style defeats the orator's +purpose, and we end by regarding the whole, not as a serious pleading, +but as an epideictic display. Hobbes said truly that the two books +were "like two declamations, for and against, made by one and the same +man as a rhetorical exercise" (_Behemoth_). + +Milton's _Defensio_ was not calculated to advance the cause of the +Parliament, and there is no evidence that it produced any effect upon +the public, beyond that of raising Milton's personal credit. That +England, and Puritan England, where humane studies were swamped in a +biblical brawl, should produce a man who could write Latin as well +as Salmasius, was a great surprise to the learned world in Holland. +Salmasius was unpopular at Leyden, and there was therefore a +predisposition to regard Milton's book with favour. Salmasius was +twenty years older than Milton, and in these literary digladiations +readers are always ready to side with a new writer. The contending +interests of the two great English parties, the wider issue between +republic and absolutism, the speculative inquiry into the right of +resistance, were lost sight of by the spectators of this literary +duel. The only question was whether Salmasius could beat the new +champion, or the new man beat Salmasius, at a match of vituperation. + +Salmasius of course put in a rejoinder. His rapid pen found no +difficulty in turning off 300 pages of fluent Latin. It was his +last occupation. He died at Spa, where he was taking the waters, in +September, 1653, and his reply was not published till 1660, after the +Restoration, when all interest had died out of the controversy. If it +be true that the work was written at Spa, without books at hand, it +is certainly a miraculous effort of memory. It does no credit to +Salmasius. He had raked together, after the example of Scioppius +against Scaliger, all the tittle-tattle which the English exiles had +to retail about Milton and his antecedents. Bramhall, who bore Milton +a special grudge, was the channel of some of this scandal, and +Bramhall's source was possibly Chappell, the tutor with whom Milton +had had the early misunderstanding. (See above p. 6). If any one +thinks that classical studies of themselves cultivate the taste and +the sentiments, let him look into Salmasius's _Responsio_. There he +will see the first scholar of his age not thinking it unbecoming to +taunt Milton with his blindness, in such language as this: "a puppy, +once my pretty little man, now blear-eyed, or rather a blindling; +having never had any mental vision, he has now lost his bodily sight; +a silly coxcomb, fancying himself a beauty; an unclean beast, with +nothing more human about him than his guttering eyelids; the fittest +doom for him would be to hang him on the highest gallows, and set his +head on the Tower of London." These are some of the incivilities, not +by any means the most revolting, but such as I dare reproduce, of this +literary warfare. + +Salmasius's taunt about Milton's venal pen is no less false than his +other gibes. The places of those who served the Commonwealth, were +places of "hard work and short rations." Milton never received for his +_Defensio_ a sixpence beyond his official salary. It has indeed been +asserted that he was paid 1000 l.. for it by order of Parliament, +and this falsehood having been adopted by Johnson--himself a +pensioner--has passed into all the biographies, and will no doubt +continue to be repeated to the end of time. This is a just nemesis +upon Milton, who on his part had twitted Salmasius with having been +complimented by the exiled King with a purse of 100 Jacobuses for his +performance. The one insinuation was as false as the other. Charles +II. was too poor to offer more than thanks. Milton was too proud to +receive for defending his country what the Parliament was willing to +pay. Sir Peter Wentworth, of Lillingston Lovell, in Oxfordshire, left +in his will 100 l. to Milton for his book against Salmasius. But this +was long after the Restoration, and Milton did not live to receive the +legacy. + +Instead of receiving an honorarium for his _Defence of the English +People_, Milton had paid for it a sacrifice for which money could not +compensate him. His eyesight, though quick, as he was a proficient +with the rapier, had never been strong. His constant headaches, his +late study, and (thinks Phillips) his perpetual tampering with physic +to preserve his sight, concurred to bring the calamity upon him. It +had been steadily coming on for a dozen years before, and about 1650 +the sight of the left eye was gone. He was warned by his doctor that +if he persisted in using the remaining eye for book-work, he would +lose that too. "The choice lay before me," Milton writes in the +_Second Defence_, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of +eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if +Aesculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but +obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from +heaven. I considered with myself that many had purchased less good +with worse ill, as they who give their lives to reap only glory, and I +thereupon concluded to employ the little remaining eyesight I was to +enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was in +my power to render." + +It was about the early part of the year 1652 that the calamity was +consummated. At the age of forty-three he was in total darkness. +The deprivation of sight, one of the severest afflictions of which +humanity is capable, falls more heavily on the man whose occupation +lies among books, than upon others. He who has most to lose, loses +most. To most persons books are but an amusement, an interlude between +the hours of serious occupation. The scholar is he who has found the +key to knowledge, and knows his way about in the world of printed +books. To find this key, to learn the map of this country, requires a +long apprenticeship. This is a point few men can hope to reach much +before the age of forty. Milton had attained it only to find fruition +snatched from him. He had barely time to spell one line in the book of +wisdom, before, like the wizard's volume in romance, it was hopelessly +closed against him for ever. Any human being is shut out by loss +of sight from accustomed pleasures, the scholar is shut out from +knowledge. Shut out at forty-three, when his great work was not even +begun! He consoles himself with the fancy that in his pamphlet, the +_Defensio_, he had done a great work (_quanta maxima quivi_) for +his country. This poor delusion helped him doubtless to support his +calamity. He could not foresee that, in less than ten years, the great +work would he totally annihilated, his pamphlet would he merged in the +obsolete mass of civil war tracts, and the _Defensio_, on which he had +expended his last year of eyesight, only mentioned because it had been +written by the author of _Paradise Lost_. + +The nature of Milton's disease is not ascertainable from the account +he has given of it. In the well-known passage of _Paradise Lost_, +iii. 25, he hesitates between amaurosis (drop serene) and cataract +(suffusion) + + So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs, + Or dim suffusion veil'd. + +A medical friend referred to by Professor Alfred Stern, tells him that +some of the symptoms are more like glaucoma. Milton himself has left +such an account as a patient ignorant of the anatomy of the organ +could give. It throws no light on the nature of the malady. But it is +characteristic of Milton that even his affliction does not destroy his +solicitude about his personal appearance. The taunts of his enemies +about "the lack-lustre eye, guttering with prevalent rheum" did not +pass unfelt. In his _Second Defence_ Milton informs the world that his +eyes "are externally uninjured. They shine with an unclouded light, +just like the eyes of one whose vision is perfect. This is the only +point in which I am, against my will, a hypocrite." The vindication +appears again in Sonnet xix. "These eyes, though clear To outward view +of blemish or of spot." In later years, when the exordium of Book +iii. of _Paradise Lost_ was composed, in the pathetic story of +his blindness, this little touch of vanity has disappeared, as +incompatible with the solemn dignity of the occasion. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +MILTON AND MORUS--THE SECOND DEFENCE--THE DEFENCE FOR HIMSELF. + + +Civil history is largely a history of wars between states, and +literary history is no less the record of quarrels in print between +jealous authors. Poets and artists, more susceptible than practical +men, seem to live a life of perpetual wrangle. The history of these +petty feuds is not healthy intellectual food, it is at best amusing +scandal. But these quarrels of authors do not degrade the authors in +our eyes, they only show them to be, what we knew, as vain, irritable, +and opinionative as other men. Ben Jonson, Dryden, Pope, Voltaire, +Rousseau, belabour their enemies, and we see nothing incongruous in +their doing so. It is not so when the awful majesty of Milton descends +from the empyrean throne of contemplation to use the language of the +gutter or the fish-market. The bathos is unthinkable. The universal +intellect of Bacon shrank to the paltry pursuit of place. The +disproportion between the intellectual capaciousness and the moral +aim jars upon the sense of fitness, and the name of Bacon, "wisest, +meanest," has passed into a proverb. Milton's fall is far worse. It is +not here a union of grasp of mind with an ignoble ambition, but the +plunge of the moral nature itself from the highest heights to that +despicable region of vulgar scurrility and libel, which is below the +level of average gentility and education. The name of Milton is a +synonym for sublimity. He has endowed our language with the loftiest +and noblest poetry it possesses, and the same man is found employing +speech for the most unworthy purpose to which it can be put, that of +defaming and vilifying a personal enemy, and an enemy so mean that +barely to have been mentioned by Milton had been an honour to him. In +Salmasius, Milton had at least been measuring his Latin against the +Latin of the first classicist of the age. In Alexander Morus he +wreaked august periods of Roman eloquence upon a vagabond preacher, of +chance fortunes and tarnished reputation, a _graeculus esuriens_, +who appeared against Milton by the turn of accidents, and not as the +representative of the opposite principle. In crushing Morus, Milton +could not beguile himself with the idea that he was serving a cause. + +In 1652 our country began to reap the fruits of the costly efforts it +had made to obtain good government. A central authority was at last +established, stronger than any which had existed since Elisabeth, +and one which extended over Scotland and Ireland, no less than over +England. The ecclesiastical and dynastic aims of the Stuart monarchy +had been replaced by a national policy, in which the interests of +the people of Great Britain sprang to the first place. The immediate +consequence of this union of vigour and patriotism, in the government, +was the self-assertion of England as a commercial, and therefore as a +naval power. This awakened spirit of conscious strength meant war with +the Dutch, who while England was pursuing ecclesiastical ends, had +possessed themselves of the trade of the world. War accordingly broke +out early in 1652. Even before it came to real fighting, the war of +pamphlets had recommenced. The prohibition of Salmasius' _Defensio +regia_ annulled itself as a matter of course, and Salmasius was free +to prepare a second _Defensio_ in answer to Milton. For the most +vulnerable point of the new English Commonwealth, was through the +odium excited on the continent against regicide. And the quarter +from which the monarchical pamphlets were hurled against the English +republic, was the press of the republic of the United Provinces, +the country which had set the first example of successful rebellion +against its lawful prince. + +Before Salmasius' reply was ready, there was launched from the Hague, +in March, 1652, a virulent royalist piece in Latin, under the title of +_Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum_ (Cry of the King's blood to Heaven +against the English parricides). Its 160 pages contained the +usual royalist invective in a rather common style of hyperbolical +declamation, such as that "in comparison of the execution of Charles +I., the guilt of the Jews in crucifying Christ was as nothing." +Exaggerated praises of Salmasius were followed by scurrilous and rabid +abuse of Milton. In the style of the most shameless Jesuit lampoon, +the _Amphitheatrum_ or the _Scaliger hypobolimaeus_, and with Jesuit +tactics, every odious crime is imputed to the object of the satire, +without regard to truth or probability. Exiles are proverbially +credulous, and it is likely enough that the gossip of the English +refugees at the Hague was much employed in improving or inventing +stories about the man, who had dared to answer the royalist champion +in Latin as good as his own. Salmasius in his _Defensio_ had employed +these stories, distorting the events of Milton's life to discredit +him. But for the author of the _Clamor_ there was no such excuse, for +the book was composed in England, by an author living in Oxford and +London, who had every opportunity for informing himself accurately of +the facts about Milton's life and conversation. He chose rather to +heap up at random the traditional vocabulary of defamation, which the +Catholic theologians had employed for some generations past, as their +best weapon against their adversaries. In these infamous productions, +hatched by celibate pedants in the foul atmosphere of the Jesuit +colleges, the gamut of charges always ranges from bad grammar to +unnatural crime. The only circumstance which can be alleged in +mitigation of the excesses of the _Regii sanguinis clamor_ is that +Milton had provoked the onfall by his own violence. He who throws dirt +must expect that dirt will be thrown back at him, and when it comes to +mud-throwing, the blackguard has, as it is right that he should have, +the best of it. + +The author of the _Clamor_ was Peter Du Moulin, a son of the +celebrated French Calvinist preacher of the same name. The author not +daring to entrust his pamphlet to an English press, had sent it over +to Holland, where it was printed under the supervision of Alexander +Morus. This Morus (More or Moir) was of Scottish parentage, but born +(1616) at Castres, where his father was principal of the Protestant +college. Morus fitted the _Clamor_ with a preface, in which Milton was +further reviled, and styled a "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, +cui lumen ademtum." The secret of the authorship was strictly kept, +and Morus having been known to be concerned in the publication, was +soon transformed in public belief into the author. So it was reported +to Milton, and so Milton believed. He nursed his wrath, and took +two years to meditate his blow. He caused inquiries to be made into +Morus's antecedents. It happened that Morus's conduct had been wanting +in discretion, especially in his relations with women. He had been +equally imprudent in his utterances on some of the certainties of +Calvinistic divinity. It was easy to collect any amount of evidence +under both these heads. The system of kirk discipline offered a +ready-made machinery of espionage and delation. The standing jest of +the fifteenth century on the "governante" of the curé was replaced, in +Calvinistic countries, by the anxiety of every minister to detect his +brother minister in any intimacy upon which a scandalous construction +could be put. + +Morus endeavoured, through every channel at his command, to convince +Milton that he was not the author of the _Clamor_. He could have saved +himself by revealing the real author, who was lurking all the while +close to Milton's elbow, and whose safety depended on Morus' silence. +This high-minded respect for another's secret is more to Morus' +honour, than any of the petty gossip about him is to his discredit. +He had nothing to offer, therefore, but negative assurances, and mere +denial weighed nothing with Milton, who was fully convinced that Morus +lied from terror. Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ came out in May, 1654. +In this piece (written in Latin) Morus is throughout assumed to be the +author of the _Clamor_, and as such is pursued through many pages in +a strain of invective, in which banter is mingled with ferocity. The +Hague tittle-tattle about Morus's love-affairs is set forth in the +pomp of Milton's loftiest Latin. Sonorous periods could hardly be more +disproportioned to their material content. To have kissed a girl is +painted as the blackest of crimes. The sublime and the ridiculous are +here blended without the step between. Milton descends even to abuse +the publisher, Vlac, who had officially signed his name to Morus's +preface. The mixture of fanatical choler and grotesque jocularity, in +which he rolls forth his charges of incontinence against Morus, and of +petty knavery against Vlac, is only saved from being unseemly by being +ridiculous. The comedy is complete when we remember that Morus had not +written the _Clamor_, nor Vlac the preface. Milton's rage blinded him; +he is mad Ajax castigating innocent sheep instead of Achsaeans. + +The Latin pamphlets are indispensable to a knowledge of Milton's +disposition. We see in them his grand disdain of his opponents, +reproducing the concentrated intellectual scorn of the Latin Persius; +his certainty of the absolute justice of his own cause, and the purity +of his own motives. This lofty cast of thought is combined with an +eagerness to answer the meanest taunts. The intense subjectivity +of the poet breaks out in these paragraphs, and while he should be +stating the case of the republic, he holds Europe listening to an +account of himself, his accomplishments, his studies and travels, +his stature, the colour of his eyes, his skill in fencing, &c. These +egoistic utterances must have seemed to Milton's contemporaries to be +intrusive and irrelevant vanity. _Paradise Lost_ was not as yet, and +to the Council of State Milton was, what he was to Whitelocke, "a +blind man who wrote Latin." But these paragraphs, in which he talks +of himself, are to us the only living fragments out of many hundred +worthless pages. + +To the _Defensio Secunda_ there was of course a reply by Morus. It +was entitled _Fides Publica_, because it was largely composed of +testimonials to character. When one priest charges another with +unchastity, the world looks on and laughs. But it is no laughing +matter to the defendant in such an action. He can always bring +exculpatory evidence, and in spite of any evidence he is always +believed to be guilty. The effect of Milton's furious denunciation of +Morus had been to damage his credit in religious circles, and to make +mothers of families shy of allowing him to visit at their houses. + +Milton might have been content with a victory which, as Gibbon said +of his own, "over such an antagonist was a sufficient humiliation." +Milton's magnanimity was no match for his irritation. He published +a rejoinder to Morus's _Fides Publica_, reiterating his belief that +Morus was author of the _Clamor_, but that it was no matter whether +he was or not, since by publishing the book, and furnishing it with a +recommendatory preface, he had made it his own. The charges against +Morus' character he reiterated, and strengthened by new "facts", which +Morus's enemies had hastened to contribute to the budget of +calumny. These imputations on character, mixed with insinuations of +unorthodoxy, such as are ever rife in clerical controversy, Milton +invests with the moral indignation of a prophet denouncing the enemies +of Jehovah. He expends a wealth of vituperative Latin which makes us +tremble, till we remember that it is put in motion to crush an insect. + +This _Pro se defensio_ (Defence for himself), appeared in August, +1656. Morus met it by a supplementary _Fides Publica_, and Milton, +resolved to have the last word, met him by a _Supplement to the +Defence_. The reader will be glad to hear that this is the end of the +Morus controversy. We leave Milton's victim buried under the mountains +of opprobrious Latin here heaped upon him--this "circumforanens +pharmacopola, vanissimus circulator, propudium hominis et +prostibulum." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +LATIN SECRETARYSHIP COMES TO AN END--MILTON'S FRIENDS. + + +It is no part of Milton's biography to relate the course of public +events in these momentous years, merely because as Latin secretary +he formulated the despatches of the Protector or of his Council, and +because these Latin letters are incorporated in Milton's works. On the +course of affairs Milton's voice had no influence, as he had no part +in their transaction. Milton was the last man of whom a practical +politician would have sought advice. He knew nothing of the temper of +the nation, and treated all that opposed his own view with supreme +disdain. On the other hand, idealist though he was, he does not +move in the sphere of speculative politics, or count among those +philosophic names, a few in each century, who have influenced, not +action but thought. Accordingly his opinions have for us a purely +personal interest. They are part of the character of the poet Milton, +and do not belong to either world, of action or of mind. + +The course of his political convictions up to 1654 has been traced in +our narrative thus far. His breeding at home, at school, at college, +was that of a member of the Established Church, but of the Puritan and +Calvinistic, not of the Laudian and Arminian, party within its +pale. By 1641, we find that his Puritanism has developed into +Presbyterianism; he desires, not to destroy the Church, but to reform +it by abolishing government by bishops, and substituting the Scotch or +Genevan discipline. When he wrote his _Reason of Church Government_ +(1642), he is still a royalist; not in the cavalier sense of a person +attached to the reigning sovereign, or the Stuart family, but still +retaining the belief of his age that monarchy in the abstract had +somewhat of divine sanction. Before 1649, the divine right of +monarchy, and the claim of Presbytery to be scriptural, have yielded +in his mind to a wider conception of the rights of the man and the +Christian. To use the party names of the time, Milton the Presbyterian +has expanded into Milton the Independent. There is to be no State +Church, and instead of a monarchy there is to be a commonwealth. +Very soon the situation developes the important question how this +commonwealth shall be administered--whether by a representative +assembly, or by a picked council, or a single governor. This question +was put to a test in the Parliament of 1654. The experiment of a +representative assembly, begun in September 1654, broke down in +January 1655. Before it was tried we find Milton in his _Second +Defence_, in May 1654, recommending Cromwell to govern not by a +Parliament, but by a council of officers; i.e. he is a commonwealth's +man. Arrived at this point, would Milton take his stand upon +doctrinaire republicanism, and lose sight of liberty in the attempt +to secure equality, as his friends Vane, Overton, Bradshaw would have +done? Or would his idealist exaltation sweep him on into some one of +the current fanaticisms, Leveller, Fifth Monarchy, or Muggletonian? +Unpractical as he was, he was close enough to State affairs as Latin +Secretary, to see that personal government by the Protector was, +at the moment, the only solution. If the liberties that had been +conquered by the sword were to be maintained, between levelling chaos +on the one hand, and royalist reaction on the other, it was the +Protector alone to whom those who prized liberty above party names +could look. Accordingly Milton may be regarded from the year 1654 +onwards as an Oliverian, though with particular reservations. He +saw--it was impossible for a man in his situation not to see--the +unavoidable necessity which forced Cromwell, at this moment, to +undertake to govern without a representative assembly. The political +necessity of the situation was absolute, and all reasonable men who +were embarked in the cause felt it to be so. + +Through all these stages Milton passed in the space of twenty +years--Church-Puritan, Presbyterian, Royalist, Independent, +Commonwealth's man, Oliverian. These political phases were not the +acquiescence of a placeman, or indifferentist, in mutations for which +he does not care; still less were they changes either of party or of +opinion. Whatever he thought, Milton thought and felt intensely, and +expressed emphatically; and even his enemies could not accuse him of +a shadow of inconsistency or wavering in his principles. On the +contrary, tenacity, or persistence of idea, amounted in him to a +serious defect of character. A conviction once formed dominated him, +so that, as in the controversy with Morus, he could not be persuaded +that he had made a mistake. No mind, the history of which we have an +opportunity of intimately studying, could be more of one piece and +texture than was that of Milton from youth to age. The names, which +we are obliged to give to his successive political stages, do not +indicate shades of colour adopted from the prevailing political +ground, but the genuine development of the public consciousness of +Puritan England repeated in an individual. Milton moved forward, not +because Cromwell and the rest advanced, but with Cromwell and the +rest. We may perhaps describe the motive force as a passionate +attachment to personal liberty, liberty of thought and action. This +ideal force working in the minds of a few, "those worthies which +are the soul of that enterprise" (_Tenure of Kings_), had been the +mainspring of the whole revolution. The Levellers, Quakers, Fifth +Monarchy men, and the wilder Anabaptist sects, only showed the +workings of the same idea in men, whose intellects had not been +disciplined by education or experience. The idea of liberty, +formulated into a doctrine, and bowed down to as a holy creed, made +some of its best disciples, such as Harrison and Overton, useless at +the most critical juncture. The party of anti-Oliverian republicans, +the Intransigentes, became one of the greatest difficulties of the +Government. Milton, with his idealism, his thoroughness, and obstinate +persistence, was not unlikely to have shipwrecked upon the same rock. +He was saved by his constancy to the principle of religious liberty, +which was found with the party that had destroyed the King because he +would not be ruled by a Parliament, while in 1655 it supported the +Protector in governing without a Parliament. Supreme authority +in itself was not Cromwell's aim; he used it only to secure the +fulfilment of those ideas of religious liberty, civil order, and +Protestant ascendancy in Europe, which filled his whole soul. To +Milton, as to Cromwell, forms, whether of worship or government, were +but means to an end, and were to be changed whenever expediency might +require. + +In 1655, then, Milton was an Oliverian, but with reservations. The +most important of these reservations regarded the relation of the +state to the church. Cromwell never wholly dropped the scheme of a +national church. It was, indeed, to be as comprehensive as possible; +Episcopacy was pulled down, Presbytery was not set up, but individual +ministers might be Episcopalian or Presbyterian in sentiment, provided +they satisfied a certain standard, intelligible enough to that +generation, of "godliness". Here Milton seems to have remained +throughout upon the old Independent platform; he will not have the +civil power step over its limits into the province of religion at all. +Many matters, in which the old prelatic church had usurped upon the +domain of the state, should be replaced under the secular authority. +But the spiritual region was matter of conscience, and not of external +regulation. + +A further reservation which Milton would make related to endowments, +or the maintenance of ministers. The Protectorate, and the +constitution of 1657, maintained an established clergy in the +enjoyment of tithes or other settled stipends. Nothing was more +abhorrent to Milton's sentiment than state payment in religious +things. The minister who receives such pay becomes a state pensioner, +"a hireling." The law of tithes is a Jewish law, repealed by the +Gospel, under which the minister is only maintained by the freewill +offerings of the congregation to which he ministers. This antipathy to +hired preachers was one of Milton's earliest convictions. It thrusts +itself, rather importunately, into _Lycidas_ (1636), and reappears +in the Sonnet to Cromwell (_Sonnet_ xvii., 1652), before it is +dogmatically expounded in the pamphlet, _Considerations touching means +to remove Hirelings out of the Church_ (1659). Of the two corruptions +of the church by the secular power, one by force, the other by pay, +Milton regards the last as the most dangerous. "Under force, though +no thank to the forcers, true religion ofttimes best thrives and +flourishes; but the corruption of teachers, most commonly the effect +of hire, is the very bane of truth in them who are so corrupted." +Nor can we tax this aversion to a salaried ministry, with being a +monomania of sect. It is essentially involved in the conception of +religion as a spiritual state, a state of grace. A soul in this state +can only be ministered to by a brother in a like frame of mind. To +assign a place with a salary, is to offer a pecuniary inducement to +simulate this qualification. This principle may be wrong, but it is +not unreasonable. It is the very principle on which the England of our +day has decided against the endowment of science. The endowment of the +church was to Milton the poison of religion, and in so thinking he was +but true to his conception of religion. Cromwell, whatever may have +been his speculative opinions, decided in favour of a state endowment, +upon the reasons, or some of them, which have moved modern statesmen +to maintain church establishments. + +With whatever reservations, Milton was an Oliverian. Supporting the +Protector's policy, he admired his conduct, and has recorded his +admiration in the memorable sonnet xii. How the Protector thought of +Milton, or even that he knew him at all, there remains no evidence. +Napoleon said of Corneille that, if he had lived in his day, he would +have made him his first minister. + +Milton's ideas were not such as could have value in the eyes of a +practical statesman. Yet Cromwell was not always taking advice, or +discussing business. He, who could take a liking for the genuine +inwardness of the enthusiast George Fox, might have been expected to +appreciate equal unworldliness, joined with culture and reading, in +Milton. "If," says Neal, "there was a man in England who excelled in +any faculty or science, the Protector would find him out and reward +him." But the excellence which the Protector prized was aptness for +public employment, and this was the very quality in which Milton was +deficient. + +The poverty of Milton's state letters has been often remarked. +Whenever weighty negotiations are going on, other pens than his are +employed. We may ascribe this to his blindness. Milton could only +dictate, and therefore everything entrusted to him must pass through +an amanuensis, who might blab. One exception to the commonplace +character of the state papers there is. The massacre of the Vaudois +by their own sovereign, Charles Emanuel II., Duke of Savoy, excited a +thrill of horror in England greater than the massacres of Scio or of +Batak roused in our time. For in Savoy it was not humanity only that +was outraged, it was a deliberate assault of the Papal half of Europe +upon an outpost of the Protestant cause. + +One effect of the Puritan revolution had been to alter entirely the +foreign policy of England. By nature, by geographical position, by +commercial occupations, and the free spirit of the natives, these +islands were marked out to be members of the northern confederacy of +progressive and emancipated Europe. The foreign policy of Elisabeth +had been steady adhesion to this law of nature. The two first Stuarts, +coquetting with semi-Catholicism at home, had leaned with all the +weight of the crown and of government towards catholic connexions. The +country had always offered a vain resistance; the Parliament of +1621 had been dismissed for advising James to join the continental +protestants against Spain. It was certain, therefore, that when the +government became Puritan, its foreign policy would again become that +of Elisabeth. This must have been the case even if Cromwell had not +been there. He saw not only that England must be a partner in the +general protestant interest, but that it fell to England to make the +combination and to lead it. He acted in this with his usual decision. +He placed England in her natural antagonism to Spain; he made peace +with the Dutch; he courted the friendship of the Swiss Cantons, and +the alliance of the Scandinavian and German Princes; and to France, +which had a divided interest, he made advantageous offers provided the +Cardinal would disconnect himself from the ultramontane party. + +It was in April 1655, that the Vaudois atrocities suddenly added the +impulse of religious sympathy to the permanent gravitation of the +political forces. In all catholic countries the Jesuits had by this +time made themselves masters of the councils of the princes. The aim +of Jesuit policy in the seventeenth century was nothing less than the +entire extirpation of protestantism and protestants in the countries +which they ruled. The inhabitants of certain Piedmontese valleys had +held from time immemorial, and long before Luther, tenets and forms of +worship very like those to which the German reformers had sought to +bring back the church. The Vaudois were wretchedly poor, and had been +incessantly the objects of aggression and persecution. In January +1655, a sudden determination was taken by the Turin government to +make them conform to the catholic religion by force. The whole of the +inhabitants of three valleys were ordered to quit the country within +three days, under pain of death and confiscation of goods, unless they +would become, or undertake to become, catholic. They sent their +humble remonstrances to the court of Turin against this edict. The +remonstrances were disregarded, and military execution was ordered. On +April 17, 1655, the soldiers, recruits from all countries--the Irish +are specially mentioned--were let loose upon the unarmed population. +Murder and rape and burning are the ordinary incidents of military +execution. These were not enough to satisfy the ferocity of the +catholic soldiery, who revelled for many days in the infliction of all +that brutal lust or savage cruelty can suggest to men. + +It was nearly a month before the news reached England. A cry of horror +went through the country, and Cromwell said it came "as near his +heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been concerned." A day +of humiliation was appointed, large collections were made for the +sufferers, and a special envoy was despatched to remonstrate with the +Duke of Savoy. Cardinal Mazarin, however, seeing the importance which +the Lord Protector would acquire by taking the lead on this occasion, +stepped in, and patched up a hasty arrangement, the treaty of +Pignerol, by which some sort of fallacious protection was ostensibly +secured to the survivors of the massacre. + +All the despatches in this business were composed by Milton. But he +only found the words; especially in the letter to the Duke of Savoy, +the tone of which is much more moderate than we should have expected, +considering that Blake was in the Mediterranean, and master of the +coasts of the Duke's dominions. It is impossible to extract from these +letters any characteristic trait, unless it is from the speech, which +the envoy, Morland, was instructed to deliver at Turin, in which it is +said that all the Neros of all ages had never contrived inhumanities +so atrocious, as what had taken place in the Vaudois valleys. Thus +restricted in his official communications, Milton gave vent to his +personal feelings on the occasion in the well-known sonnet (xviii.) +"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on +the Alpine mountains cold." + +It has been already said that there remains no trace of any personal +intercourse between Milton and Cromwell. He seems to have remained +equally unknown to, or unregarded by, the other leading men in the +Government or the Council. It is vain to conjecture the cause of this +general neglect. Some have found it in the coldness with which Milton +regarded, parts at least of, the policy of the Protectorate. Others +refer it to the haughty nature of the man, who will neither ask a +favour, nor make the first advances towards intimacy. This last +supposition is nearer the truth than the former. An expression he uses +in a private letter may be cited in its support. Writing to Peter +Heimbach in 1657, to excuse himself from giving him a recommendation +to the English ambassador in Holland, he says: "I am sorry that I am +not able to do this; I have very little acquaintance with those in +power, inasmuch as I keep very much to my own house, and prefer to do +so." Something may also be set down to the character of the Puritan +leaders, alien to all poetry, and knowing no books but the Bible. + +The mental isolation in which the great poet lived his life, is +a remarkable feature of his biography. It was not only after the +Restoration that he appears lonely and friendless; it was much +the same during the previous period of the Parliament and the +Protectorate. Just at one time, about 1641, we hear from our best +authority, Phillips, of his cultivating the society of men of his own +age, and "keeping a gawdy-day", but this only once in three weeks or +a month, with "two gentlemen of Gray's Inn." He had, therefore, known +what it was to be sociable. But the general tenour of his life was +other; proud, reserved, self-contained, repellent; brooding over his +own ideas, not easily admitting into his mind the ideas of others. It +is indeed an erroneous estimate of Milton to attribute to him a hard +or austere nature. He had all the quick sensibility which belongs to +the poetic temperament, and longed to be loved that he might love +again. But he had to pay the penalty of all who believe in their own +ideas, in that their ideas come between them and the persons that +approach them, and constitute a mental barrier which can only be +broken down by sympathy. And sympathy for ideas is hard to find, just +in proportion as those ideas are profound, far-reaching, the fruit of +long study and meditation. Hence it was that Milton did not associate +readily with his contemporaries, but was affable and instructive in +conversation with young persons, and those who would approach him in +the attitude of disciples. His daughter Deborah, who could tell so +little about him, remembered that he was delightful company, the life +of a circle, and that he was so, through a flow of subjects, and +an unaffected cheerfulness and civility. I would interpret this +testimony, the authenticity of which is indisputable, of his demeanour +with the young, and those who were modest enough to wait upon his +utterances. His isolation from his coevals, and from those who offered +resistance, was the necessary consequence of his force of character, +and the moral tenacity which endured no encroachment on the narrow +scheme of thought; over which it was incessantly brooding. + +Though, as Johnson says "his literature was immense", there was no +humanity in it; it was fitted immovably into a scholastic frame-work. +Hence it was no bond of sympathy between him and other men. We find +him in no intimate relation with any of the contemporary men of +learning, poets, or wits. From such of them as were of the cavalier +party he was estranged by politics. That it was Milton's interposition +which saved Davenant's life in 1651, even were the story better +authenticated than it is, is not an evidence of intimacy. The three +men most eminent for learning (in the usually received sense of the +word) in England at that day were Selden (d. 1654), Gataker (d. 1654), +and Archbishop Usher (d. 1656), all of whom were to be found in +London. With none of the three is there any trace of Milton ever +having had intercourse. + +It is probable, but not certain, that it was at Milton's intercession +that the Council proposed to subsidise Brian Walton in his great +enterprise--the Polyglott Bible. This, the noblest monument of the +learning of the Anglican Church, was projected and executed by the +silenced clergy. Fifteen years of spoliation and humiliation thus bore +richer fruit of learning than the two centuries of wealth and honour +which have since elapsed. As Brian Walton had, at one time, been +curate of Allhallows, Bread Street, Milton may have known him, and it +has been inferred that by Twells' expression--"The Council of +state, before whom _some_, having _relation to them_, brought this +business"--Milton is meant. + +Not with John Hales, Cudworth, Whichcote, Nicholas Bernard, Meric +Casaubon, nor with any of the men of letters who were churchmen, do +we find Milton in correspondence. The interest of religion was +more powerful than the interest of knowledge; and the author of +_Eikonoklastes_ must have been held in special abhorrence by the loyal +clergy. The general sentiment of this party is expressed in Hacket's +tirade, for which the reader is referred to his Life of Archbishop +Williams. + +From Presbyterians, such as Theophilus Gale or Baxter, Milton was +equally separated by party. Of Hobbes, Milton's widow told Aubrey +"that he was not of his acquaintance; that her husband did not like +him at all, but would acknowledge him to be a man of great parts." + +Owing to these circumstances, the circle of Milton's intimates +contains few, and those undistinguished names. One exception there +was. In Andrew Marvel Milton found one congenial spirit, incorruptible +amid poverty, unbowed by defeat. Marvel was twelve years Milton's +junior, and a Cambridge man (Trinity), like himself. He had had better +training still, having been for two years an inmate of Nunappleton, in +the capacity of instructor to Mary, only daughter of the great Lord +Fairfax. In 1652, Milton had recommended Marvel for the appointment of +assistant secretary to himself, now that he was partially disabled +by his blindness. The recommendation was not effectual at the time, +another man, Philip Meadows, obtaining the post. It was not till 1657, +when Meadows was sent on a mission to Denmark, that Marvel became +Milton's colleague. He remained attached to him to the last. It were +to be wished that he had left some reminiscences of his intercourse +with the poet in his later years, some authentic notice of him in his +prose letters, instead of a copy of verses, which attest, at least, +his affectionate admiration for Milton's great epic, though they are a +poor specimen of his own poetical efforts. + +Of Marchmont Needham, and Samuel Hartlib mention has been already +made. During the eight years of his sojourn in the house in Petty +France, "he was frequently visited by persons of quality," says +Phillips. The only name he gives is Lady Ranelagh. This lady, by birth +a Boyle, sister of Robert Boyle, had placed first her nephew, and then +her son, under Milton's tuition. Of an excellent understanding, and +liberally cultivated, she sought Milton's society, and as he could +not go to visit her, she went to him. There are no letters of Milton +addressed to her, but he mentions her once as "a most superior woman," +and when, in 1656, she left London for Ireland, he "grieves for the +loss of the one acquaintance which was worth to him all the rest." +These names, with that of Dr. Paget, exhaust the scanty list of +Milton's intimates during this period. + +To these older friends, however, must be added his former pupils, now +become men, but remaining ever attached to their old tutor, seeing him +often when in London, and when absent corresponding with him. With +them he was "affable and instructive in conversation." Henry Lawrence, +son of the President of Oliver's Council, and Cyriac Skinner, +grandson, of Chief Justice Coke, were special favourites. With these +he would sometimes "by the fire help waste a sullen day;" and it was +these two who called forth from him the only utterances of this time +which are not solemn, serious, or sad. Sonnet XVI is a poetical +invitation to Henry Lawrence, "of virtuous father virtuous son," to a +"neat repast," not without wine and song, to cheer the winter season. +Besides these two, whose names are familiar to us through the Sonnets, +there was Lady Ranelagh's son, Richard Jones, who went, in 1656, to +Oxford, attended by his tutor, the German Heinrich Oldenburg. We have +two letters (Latin) addressed to Jones at Oxford, which are curious +as showing that Milton was as dissatisfied with that university even +after the reform, with Oliver Chancellor, and Owen Vice-Chancellor, as +he had been with Cambridge. + +His two nephews, also his pupils, must have ceased at a very early +period to be acceptable either as friends or companions. They +had both--but the younger brother, John, more decidedly than +Edward--passed into the opposite camp. This is a result of the uncle's +strict system of Puritan discipline, which will surprise no one who +has observed that, in education, mind reacts against the pressure of +will. The teacher who seeks to impose his views raises antagonists, +and not disciples. The generation of young men who grew up under the +Commonwealth were in intellectual revolt against the constraint of +Puritanism, before they proceeded to political revolution against its +authority. Long before the reaction embodied itself in the political +fact of the Restoration, it had manifested itself in popular +literature. The theatres were still closed by the police, but Davenant +found a public in London to applaud an "entertainment by declamations +and music, after the manner of the ancients" (1656). The press began +timidly to venture on books of amusement, in a style of humour which +seemed ribald and heathenish to the staid and sober covenanter. +Something of the jollity and merriment of old Elisabethan days seemed +to be in the air. But with a vast difference. Instead of "dallying +with the innocence of love," as in _England's Helicon_ (1600), or +_The Passionate Pilgrim_, the sentiment, crushed and maimed by unwise +repression, found a less honest and less refined expression. The +strongest and most universal of human passions when allowed freedom, +light, and air, becomes poetic inspiration. The same passion coerced +by police is but driven underground. + +So it came to pass that, in these years, the Protector's Council of +state was much exercised by attempts of the London press to supply the +public, weary of sermons, with some light literature of the class now +(1879) known as facetious. On April 25, 1656, the august body which +had upon its hands the government of three kingdoms and the protection +of the protestant interest militant throughout Europe, could find +nothing better to do than to take into consideration a book entitled +_Sportive Wit, or The Muse's Merriment_. Sad to relate, the book +was found to contain "much lascivious and profane matter." And the +editor?--no other than John Phillips, Milton's youngest nephew! It is +as if nature, in reasserting herself, had made deliberate selection of +its agent. The pure poet of _Comus_, the man who had publicly boasted +his chastity, had trained up a pupil to become the editor of an +immodest drollery! Another and more original production of John +Phillips, the _Satyr against Hypocrites_, was an open attack, with +mixed banter and serious indignation, on the established religion. "It +affords," says Godwin, "unequivocal indication of the company now kept +by the author with cavaliers, and _bon vivans_, and demireps, and men +of ruined fortunes." Edward Phillips, the elder brother, followed suit +with the _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence_ (1658), a book, according +to Godwin, "entitled to no insignificant rank among the multifarious +productions issued from the press, to debauch the manners of the +nation, and to bring back the King." Truly, a man's worst vexations +come to him from his own relations. Milton had the double annoyance +of the public exposure before the Council of State, and the private +reflection on the failure of his own system of education. + +The homage which was wanting to the prophet in his own country was +more liberally tendered by foreigners. Milton, it must be remembered, +was yet only known in England as the pamphleteer of strong republican, +but somewhat eccentric, opinions. On the continent he was the answerer +of Salmasius, the vindicator of liberty against despotic power. +"Learned foreigners of note," Phillips tells us, "could not part +out of this city without giving a visit" to his uncle. Aubrey even +exaggerates this flocking of the curious, so far as to say that some +came over into England only to see Oliver Protector and John Milton. +That Milton had more than he liked of these sightseers, who came to +look at him when he could not see them, we can easily believe. Such +visitors would of course be from protestant countries. Italians, +though admiring his elegant Latin, had "disliked him on account of +his too severe morals." A glimpse, and no more than a glimpse, of +the impression such visitors could carry away, we obtain in a letter +written, in 1651, by a Nüremberg pastor, Christoph Arnold, to a friend +at home:--"The strenuous defender of the new _régime_, Milton, enters +readily into conversation; his speech is pure, his written style very +pregnant. He has committed himself to a harsh, not to say unjust, +criticism of the old English divines, and of their Scripture +commentaries, which are truly learned, be witness the genius of +learning himself!" It must not be supposed from this that Milton had +discoursed with Arnold on the English divines. The allusion is to that +onfall upon the reformers, Cranmer, Latimer, &c., which had escaped +from Milton's pen in 1642 to the great grief of his friends. If +the information of a dissenting minister, one Thomas Bradbury, who +professed to derive it from Jeremiah White, one of Oliver's chaplains, +may be trusted, Milton "was allowed by the Parliament a weekly table +for the entertainment of foreign ministers and persons of learning, +such especially as came from protestant states, which allowance was +also continued by Cromwell." + +Such homage, though it may be a little tiresome, may have gratified +for the moment the political writer, but it would not satisfy the poet +who was dreaming of an immortality of far other fame-- + + Two equal'd with me in fate, + So were I equal'd with them in renown. + +And to one with Milton's acute sensibility, yearning for sympathy and +love, dependent, through his calamity, on the eyes, as on the heart, +of others, his domestic interior was of more consequence than outside +demonstrations of respect. Four years after the death of his first +wife he married again. We know nothing more of this second wife, +Catharine Woodcock, than what may be gathered from the Sonnet XIX, +in which he commemorated his "late espoused saint," in whose person +"love, sweetness, goodness shin'd." After only fifteen months union +she died (1658), after having given birth to a daughter, who lived +only a few months. Milton was again alone. + +His public functions as Latin Secretary had been contracted within +narrow limits by his blindness. The heavier part of the duties had +been transferred to others, first to Weckherlin, then to Philip +Meadows, and lastly to Andrew Marvel. The more confidential diplomacy +Thurloe reserved for his own cabinet. But Milton continued up to the +last to be occasionally called upon for a Latin epistle. On September +3, 1658, passed away the master-mind which had hitherto compelled the +jarring elements in the nation to co-exist together, and chaos was let +loose. Milton retained and exercised his secretaryship under Richard +Protector, and even under the restored Parliament. His latest Latin +letter is of date May 16, 1659. He is entirely outside all the +combinations and complications which filled the latter half of that +year, after Richard's retirement in May. It is little use writing to +foreign potentates now, for, with one man's life, England has fallen +from her lead in Europe, and is gravitating towards the catholic and +reactionary powers, France or Spain. Milton, though he knows nothing +more than one of the public, "only what it appears to us without +doors," he says, will yet write about it. The habit of pamphleteering +was on him, and he will write what no one will care to read. The +stiff-necked commonwealth men, with their doctrinaire republicanism, +were standing out for their constitutional ideas, blind to the fact +that the royalists were all the while undermining the ground beneath +the feet alike of Presbyterian and Independent, Parliament and army. +The Greeks of Constantinople denouncing the Azymite, when Mohammed II. +was forming his lines round the doomed city, were not more infatuated +than these pedantic commonwealth men with their parliamentarianism +when Charles II. was at Calais. + +Not less inopportune than the public men of the party, Milton chooses +this time for inculcating his views on endowments. A fury of utterance +was upon him, and he poured out, during the death-throes of the +republic, pamphlet upon pamphlet, as fast as he could get them written +to his dictation. These extemporised effusions betray in their style, +hurry and confusion, the restlessness of a coming despair. The +passionate enthusiasm of the early tracts is gone, and all the old +faults, the obscurity, the inconsecutiveness, the want of arrangement, +are exaggerated. In the _Ready Way_ there is a monster sentence of +thirty-nine lines, containing 336 words. Though his instincts were +perturbed, he was unaware what turn things were taking. In February +1660, when all persons of ordinary information saw that the +restoration of monarchy was certain, Milton knew it not, and put out a +tract to show his countrymen a _Ready and easy way to establish a free +Commonwealth_. With the same pertinacity with which he had adhered +to his own assumption that Morus was author of the _Clamor_, he now +refused to believe in the return of the Stuarts. Fast as his pen +moved, events outstripped it, and he has to rewrite the _Ready and +easy way_ to suit their march. The second edition is overtaken by the +Restoration, and it should seem was never circulated. Milton will ever +"give advice to Sylla," and writes a letter of admonition to Monk, +which, however, never reached either the press or Sylla. + +The month of May 1660, put a forced end to his illusion. Before the +29th of that month he had fled from the house in Petty France, and +been sheltered by a friend in the city. In this friend's house, in +Bartholomew Close, he lay concealed till the passing of the Act of +Oblivion, 29th August. Phillips says that he owed his exemption from +the vengeance which overtook so many of his friends, to Andrew Marvel, +"who acted vigorously in his behalf, and made a considerable party for +him." But in adding that "he was so far excepted as not to bear any +office in the commonwealth," Phillips is in error. Milton's name does +not occur in the Act. Pope used to tell that Davenant had employed his +interest to protect a brother-poet, thus returning a similar act of +generosity done to himself by Milton in 1650. Pope had this story from +Betterton the actor. How far Davenant exaggerated to Betterton his own +influence or his exertions, we cannot tell. Another account assigns +the credit of the intervention to Secretary Morris and Sir Thomas +Clarges. After all, it is probable that he owed his immunity to his +insignificance and his harmlessness. The formality of burning two of +his books by the hands of the hangman was gone through. He was +also for some time during the autumn of 1660 in the custody of the +serjeant-at-arms, for on 15th December, there is an entry in the +Commons journals ordering his discharge. It is characteristic of +Milton that, even in this moment of peril, he stood up for his rights, +and refused to pay an overcharge, which the official thought he might +safely exact from a rebel and a covenanter. + + + + + +THIRD PERIOD, 1660-1674. + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +BIOGRAPHICAL.--LITERARY OCCUPATION.--RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. + + +Revolutions are of two kinds; they are either progressive or +reactionary. A revolution of progress is often destructive, sweeping +away much which should have been preserved. But such a revolution has +a regenerating force; it renews the youth of a nation, and gives free +play to its vital powers. Lost limbs are replaced by new. A revolution +of reaction, on the other hand, is a benumbing influence, paralysing +effort, and levelling character. In such a conservative revolution, +the mean, the selfish, and the corrupt come to the top; man seeks +ease and enjoyment rather than duty; virtue, honour, patriotism, and +disinterestedness disappear altogether from a society which has ceased +to believe in them. + +The Restoration of 1660 was such a revolution. Complete and +instantaneous inversion of the position of the two parties in the +nation, it occasioned much individual hardship. But this was only the +fortune of war, the necessary consequence of party ascendancy. The +Restoration was much more than a triumph of the party of the royalists +over that of the roundheads; it was the deathblow to national +aspiration, to all those aims which raise man above himself. It +destroyed and trampled under foot his ideal. The Restoration was a +moral catastrophe. It was not that there wanted good men among the +churchmen, men as pious and virtuous as the Puritans whom they +displaced. But the royalists came back as the party of reaction, +reaction of the spirit of the world against asceticism, of +self-indulgence against duty, of materialism against idealism. For a +time virtue was a public laughing-stock, and the word "saint," the +highest expression in the language for moral perfection, connoted +everything that was ridiculous. I do not speak of the gallantries of +Whitehall, which figure so prominently in the histories of the reign. +Far too much is made of these, when they are made the scapegoat of +the moralist. The style of court manners was a mere incident on the +surface of social life. The national life was more profoundly tainted +by the discouragement of all good men, which penetrated every shire +and every parish, than by the distant reports of the loose behaviour +of Charles II. Servility, meanness, venality, time-serving, and +a disbelief in virtue diffused themselves over the nation like a +pestilential miasma, the depressing influence of which was heavy, even +upon those souls which individually resisted the poison. The heroic +age of England had passed away, not by gradual decay, by imperceptible +degeneration, but in a year, in a single day, like the winter's snow +in Greece. It is for the historian to describe, and unfold the sources +of this contagion. The biographer of Milton has to take note of the +political change only as it affected the worldly circumstances of the +man, the spiritual environment of the poet, and the springs of his +inspiration. + +The consequences of the Restoration to Milton's worldly fortunes were +disastrous. As a partisan he was necessarily involved in the ruin of +his party. As a matter of course he lost his Latin secretaryship. +There is a story that he was offered to be continued in it, and that +when urged to accept the offer by his wife, he replied, "Thou art in +the right; you, as other women, would ride in your coach; for me, my +aim is to live and die an honest man." This tradition, handed on by +Pope, is of doubtful authenticity. It is not probable that the man who +had printed of Charles I. what Milton had printed, could have been +offered office under Charles II. Even were court favour to be +purchased by concessions, Milton was not the man to make them, or to +belie his own antecedents, as Marchmont, Needham, Dryden, and so many +others did. Our wish for Milton is that he should have placed himself +from the beginning above party. But he had chosen to be the champion +of a party, and he loyally accepted the consequences. He escaped with +life and liberty. The reaction, though barbarous in its treatment of +its victims, was not bloodthirsty. Milton was already punished by the +loss of his sight, and he was now mulcted in three-fourths of his +small fortune. A sum of 2000 l. which he had placed in government +securities was lost, the restored monarchy refusing to recognise +the obligations of the protectorate. He lost another like sum by +mismanagement, and for want of good advice, says Phillips, or +according to his granddaughter's statement, by the dishonesty of a +money-scrivener. He had also to give up, without compensation, some +property, valued at 60 l. a year, which he had purchased when the +estates of the Chapter of Westminster were sold. In the great fire, +1666, his house in Bread-street was destroyed. Thus, from easy +circumstances, he was reduced, if not to destitution, at least to +narrow means. He left at his death 1500 l., which Phillips calls a +considerable sum. And if he sold his books, one by one, during his +lifetime, this was because, knowing their value, he thought he could +dispose of them to greater advantage than his wife would be able to +do. + +But far outweighing such considerations as pecuniary ruin, and +personal discomfort, was the shock which the moral nature felt from +the irretrievable discomfiture of all the hopes, aims, and aspirations +which had hitherto sustained and nourished his soul. In a few months +the labour of twenty years was swept away without a trace of it being +left. It was not merely a political defeat of his party, it was the +total wreck of the principles, of the social and religious ideal, with +which Milton's life was bound up. Others, whose convictions only had +been engaged in the cause, could hasten to accommodate themselves to +the new era, or even to transfer their services to the conqueror. But +such flighty allegiance was not possible for Milton, who had embarked +in the Puritan cause not only intellectual convictions, but all the +generosity and ardour of his passionate nature. "I conceive myself to +be," he had written in 1642, "not as mine own person, but as a member +incorporate into that truth whereof I was persuaded, and whereof I had +declared myself openly to be the partaker." It was now in the moment +of overthrow that Milton became truly great. "Wandellos im ewigen +Ruin," he stood alone, and became the party himself. He took the +only course open to him, turned away his thoughts from the political +disaster, and directed the fierce enthusiasm which burned within, +upon an absorbing poetic task. His outward hopes were blasted, and he +returned with concentrated ardour to woo the muse, from whom he had so +long truanted. The passion which seethes beneath the stately march of +the verse in _Paradise Lost_, is not the hopeless moan of despair, but +the intensified fanaticism which defies misfortune to make it "bate +one jot of heart or hope." The grand loneliness of Milton after 1668, +"is reflected in his three great poems by a sublime independence of +human sympathy, like that with which mountains fascinate and rebuff +us" (_Lowell_). + +Late then, but not too late, Milton, at the age of fifty-two, +fell back upon the rich resources of his own mind, upon poetical +composition, and the study of good books, which he always asserted to +be necessary to nourish and sustain a poet's imagination. Here he had +to contend with the enormous difficulty of blindness. He engaged a +kind of attendant to read to him. But this only sufficed for English +books--imperfectly even for these--and the greater part of the choice, +not extensive, library upon which Milton drew, was Hebrew, Greek, +Latin, and the modern languages of Europe. In a letter to Heimbach, of +date 1666, he complains pathetically of the misery of having to +spell out, letter by letter, the Latin words of the epistle, to the +attendant who was writing to his dictation. At last he fell upon the +plan of engaging young friends, who occasionally visited him, to read +to him and to write for him. In the precious volume of Milton MSS. +preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, six different +hands have been distinguished. Who they were is not always known. But +Phillips tells us that, "he had daily about him one or other to read +to him; some persons of man's estate, who of their own accord greedily +catch'd at the opportunity of being his reader, that they might as +well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him by +the benefit of their reading; others of younger years sent by their +parents to the same end." Edward Phillips himself, who visited his +uncle to the last, may have been among the number, as much as his own +engagements as tutor, first to the only son of John Evelyn, then in +the family of the Earl of Pembroke, and finally to the Bennets, Lord +Arlington's children, would permit him. Others of these casual readers +were Samuel Barrow, body physician to Charles II., and Cyriac Skinner, +of whom mention has been already made (above, p. 132). + +To a blind man, left with three little girls, of whom the youngest was +only eight at the Restoration, marriage seemed equally necessary for +their sake as for his own. Milton consulted his judicious friend and +medical adviser, Dr. Paget, who recommended to him Elizabeth Minshull, +of a family of respectable position near Nantwich, in Cheshire. She +was some distant relation of Paget, who must have felt the terrible +responsibility of undertaking to recommend. She justified his +selection. The marriage took place in February 1663, and during the +remaining eleven years of his life, the poet was surrounded by the +thoughtful attentions of an active and capable woman. There is +but scanty evidence as to what she was like, either in person or +character. Aubrey, who knew her, says she was "a gent. (genteel?) +person, (of) a peaceful and agreeable humour." Newton, Bishop of +Bristol, who wrote in 1749, had heard that she was "a woman of a most +violent spirit, and a hard mother-in-law to his children." It is +certain that she regarded her husband with great veneration, and +studied his comfort. Mary Fisher, a maidservant in the house, deposed +that at the end of his life, when he was sick and infirm, his wife +having provided something for dinner she thought he would like, he +"spake to his said wife these or like words, as near as this deponent +can remember: 'God have mercy, Betty, I see thou wilt perform +according to thy promise, in providing me such dishes as I think fit +while I live, and when I die thou knowest I have left thee all.'" +There is no evidence that his wife rendered him literary assistance. +Perhaps, as she looked so thoroughly to his material comfort, her +function was held, by tacit agreement, to end there. + +As casual visitors, or volunteer readers, were not always in the way, +and a hired servant who could not spell Latin was of very restricted +use, it was not unnatural that Milton should look to his daughters, as +they grew up, to take a share in supplying his voracious demand for +intellectual food. Anne, the eldest, though she had handsome features, +was deformed and had an impediment in her speech, which made her +unavailable as a reader. The other two, Mary and Deborah, might +now have been of inestimable service to their father, had their +dispositions led them to adapt themselves to his needs, and the +circumstances of the house. Unfortunate it was for Milton, that +his biblical views on the inferiority of woman had been reduced to +practice in the bringing up of his own daughters. It cannot indeed +be said that the poet whose imagination created the Eve of _Paradise +Lost_, regarded woman as the household drudge, existing only to +minister to man's wants. Of all that men have said of women nothing is +more loftily conceived than the well-known passage at the end of Book +viii.:-- + + When I approach + Her loveliness, so absolute she seems, + And in herself complete, so well to know + Her own, that what she wills to do or say + Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; + All higher knowledge in her presence falls + Degraded; wisdom in discourse with her + Loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shows; + Authority and reason on her wait, + As one intended first, not after made + + Occasionally; and, to consummate all, + Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat + Build in her loveliest, and create an awe + About her, as a guard angelic plac'd. + +Bishop Newton thought that, in drawing Eve, Milton had in mind his +third wife, because she had hair of the colour of Eve's "golden +tresses." But Milton had never seen Elizabeth Minshull. If reality +suggested any trait, physical or mental, of the Eve, it would +certainly have been some woman seen in earlier years. + +But wherever Milton may have met with an incarnation of female +divinity such as he has drawn, it was not in his own family. We cannot +but ask, how is it that one, whose type of woman is the loftiest known +to English literature, should have brought up his own daughters on so +different a model? Milton is not one of the false prophets, who turn +round and laugh at their own enthusiasms, who say one thing in their +verses, and another thing over their cups. What he writes in his +poetry is what he thinks, what he means, and what he will do. But in +directing the bringing up of his daughters, he put his own typical +woman entirely on one side. His practice is framed on the principle +that + + Nothing lovelier can be found + In woman, than to study household good. + + _Paradise Lost_, ix. 233. + +He did not allow his daughters to learn any language, saying with a +gibe that one tongue was enough for a woman. They were not sent to any +school, and had some sort of teaching at home from a mistress. But in +order to make them useful in reading to him, their father was at the +pains to train them to read aloud in five or six languages, of none of +which they understood one word. When we think of the time and labour +which must have been expended to teach them to do this, it must occur +to us that a little more labour would have sufficed to teach them so +much of one or two of the languages, as would have made their reading +a source of interest and improvement to themselves. This Milton +refused to do. The consequence was, as might have been expected, the +occupation became so irksome to them, that they rebelled against it. +In the case of one of them, Mary, who was like her mother in person, +and took after her in other respects, this restiveness passed into +open revolt. She first resisted, then neglected, and finally came to +hate, her father. When some one spoke in her presence of her father's +approaching marriage, she said "that was no news to hear of his +wedding; but if she could hear of his death, that was something." She +combined with Anne, the eldest daughter, "to counsel his maidservant +to cheat him in his marketings." They sold his books without his +knowledge. "They made nothing of deserting him," he was often heard to +complain. They continued to live with him five or six years after +his marriage. But at last the situation became intolerable to both +parties, and they were sent out to learn embroidery in gold or silver, +as a means of obtaining their livelihood. Deborah, the youngest, was +included in the same arrangement, though she seems to have been more +helpful to her father, and to have been at one time his principal +reader. Aubrey says that he "taught her Latin, and that she was his +amanuensis." She even spoke of him when she was old--she lived to be +seventy-four--with some tenderness. She was once, in 1725, shewn +Faithorne's crayon drawing of the poet, without being told for whom it +was intended. She immediately exclaimed, "O Lord! that is the picture +of my father!" and stroking down the hair of her forehead, added, +"Just so my father wore his hair." + +One of Milton's volunteer readers, and one to whom we owe the most +authentic account of him in his last years, was a young Quaker, named +Thomas Ellwood. Milton's Puritanism had been all his life slowly +gravitating in the direction of more and more liberty, and though he +would not attach himself to any sect, he must have felt in no remote +sympathy with men who repudiated state interference in religious +matters, and disdained ordinances. Some such sympathy with the pure +spirituality of the Quaker may have disposed Milton favourably +towards Ellwood. The acquaintance once begun, was cemented by mutual +advantage. Milton, besides securing an intelligent reader, had a +pleasure in teaching; and Ellwood, though the reverse of humble, was +teachable from desire to expand himself. Ellwood took a lodging near +the poet, and went to him every day, except "first-day," in the +afternoon, to read Latin to him. + +Milton's frequent change of abode has been thought indicative of a +restless temperament, seeking escape from petty miseries by change of +scene. On emerging from hiding, or escaping from the serjeant-at-arms +in 1660, he lived or a short time in Holborn, near Red Lion Square. +From this he removed to Jewin Street, and moved again, on his +marriage, in 1662, to the house of Millington, the bookseller, who +was now beginning business, but who, before his death in 1704, had +accumulated the largest stock of second-hand books to be found in +London. His last remove was to a house in a newly-created row facing +the Artillery-ground, on the site of the west side of what is now +called Bunhill Row. This was his abode from his marriage till his +death, nearly twelve years, a longer stay than he had made in any +other residence. This is the house which, must be associated with the +poet of _Paradise Lost_, as it was here that the poem was in part +written, and wholly revised and finished. Bat the Bunhill Row house is +only producible "by the imagination; every trace of it has long +been swept away, though the name Milton Street, bestowed upon a +neighbouring street, preserves the remembrance of the poet's connexion +with the locality. Here "an ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. +Wright, found John Milton in a small chamber, "hung with rusty green, +sitting in an elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, but not +cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." At +the door of this house, sitting in the sun, looking out upon the +Artillery-ground, "in a, grey coarse cloth coat," he would receive his +visitors. On colder days he would walk for hours--three or four hours +at a time. In his garden. A garden was a _sine qua non_, and he took +care to have one to every house he lived in. + +His habit in early life had been to study late into the night. After +he lost his sight, he changed his hours, and retired to rest at nine. +In summer he rose at four, in winter at five, and began the day with +having the Hebrew Scriptures read to him. "Then he contemplated. At +seven his man came to him again, and then read to him and wrote till +dinner. The writing was as much as the reading" (Aubrey). Then he took +exercise, either walking in the garden, or swinging in a machine. His +only recreation, besides conversation, was music. He played the organ +and the bass viol, the organ most. Sometimes he would sing himself or +get his wife to sing to him, though she had, he said, no ear, yet a +good voice. Then he went up to his study to be read to till six. After +six his friends were admitted to visit him, and would sit with him +till eight. At eight he went down to supper, usually olives or some +light thing. He was very abstemious in his diet, having to contend +with a gouty diathesis. He was not fastidious in his choice of meats, +but content with anything that was in season, or easy to be procured. +After supping thus sparingly, he smoked a pipe of tobacco, drank a +glass of water, and then retired to bed. He was sparing in his use of +wine. His Samson, who in this as in other things, is Milton himself, +allays his thirst "from the clear milky juice." + +Bed with its warmth and recumbent posture he found favourable to +composition. At other times he would compose or prune his verses, as +he walked in the garden, and then, coming in, dictate. His verse was +not at the command of his will. Sometimes he would lie awake the whole +night, trying but unable to make a single line. At other times lines +flowed without premeditation "with a certain impetus and oestro." What +was his season of inspiration is somewhat uncertain. In the elegy +"To Spring," Milton says it was the spring which restored his poetic +faculty. Phillips, however, says, "that his vein never flowed happily +but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal," and that the poet told +him this. Phillips' reminiscence is perhaps true at the date of +_Paradise Lost_, when Milton's habits had changed from what they +had been at twenty. Or we may agree with Toland, that Phillips has +transposed the seasons, though preserving the fact of intermittent +inspiration. What he composed at night, he dictated in the day, +sitting obliquely in an elbow-chair, with his leg thrown over the arm. +He would dictate forty lines, as it were in a breath, and then reduce +them to half the number. + +Milton's piety is admitted, even by his enemies; and it is a piety +which oppresses his writings as well as his life, The fact that a man, +with a deep sense of religion, should not have attended any place of +public worship, has given great trouble to Milton's biographers. And +the principal biographers of this thorough-going nonconformist have +been Anglican clergymen; Bishop Newton, Todd, Mitford; Dr. Johnson, +more clerical than any cleric, being no exception, Mitford would give +Milton a dispensation on the score of his age and infirmities. But the +cause lay deeper. A profound apprehension of the spiritual world leads +to a disregard of rites. To a mind so disposed externals become, first +indifferent, then impedient. Ministration is officious intrusion. I +do not find that Milton, though he wrote against paid ministers as +hirelings, ever expressly formulated an opinion against ministers as +such. But as has already been hinted, there grew up in him, in the +last period of his life, a secret sympathy with the mode of thinking +which came to characterise the Quaker sect. Not that Milton adopted +any of their peculiar fancies. He affirms categorically the +permissibility of oaths, of military service, and requires that women +should keep silence in the congregation. But in negativing all means +of arriving at truth except the letter of scripture interpreted by +the inner light, he stood upon the same platform as the followers of +George Fox. + +Milton's latest utterance on theological topics is found in a tract +published by him the year before his death, 1673. The piece is +entitled _Of true religion, heresy, schism, toleration_; but its +meagre contents do not bear out the comprehensiveness of the title. +The only matter really discussed in the pages of the tract is the +limit of toleration. The stamp of age is upon the style, which is more +careless and incoherent even, than usual. He has here dictated his +extempore thoughts, without premeditation or revision, so that we have +here a record of Milton's habitual mind. Having watched him gradually +emancipating himself from the contracted Calvinistic mould of the +Bread-street home, it is disappointing to see that, at sixty-five, +his development has proceeded no further than we here find. He is now +willing to extend toleration to all sects who make the Scriptures +their sole rule of faith. Sects may misunderstand Scripture, but to +err is the condition of humanity, and will be pardoned by God, if +diligence, prayer, and sincerity have been used. The sects named as +to be tolerated are, Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Arians, +Socinians, Arminians. They are to be tolerated to the extent of being +allowed, on all occasions, to give account of their faith, by arguing, +preaching in their several assemblies, writing and printing. + +In this pamphlet the principle of toleration is flatly enunciated in +opposition to the practice of the Restoration. But the principle is +rested not on the statesman's ground of the irrelevancy of religious +dispute to good government, but on the theological ground of the +venial nature of religious error. And to permissible error there are +very narrow limits; limits which exclude Catholics. For Milton will +exclude Romanists from toleration, not on the statesman's ground +of incivism, but on the theologian's ground of idolatry. All his +antagonism in this tract is reserved for the Catholics. There is not +a hint of discontent with the prelatry, once intolerable to him. Yet +that prelatry was now scourging the nonconformists with scorpions +instead of with whips, with its Act of Uniformity, its Conventicle +Act, its Five-mile Act, filling the gaols with Milton's own friends +and fellow-religionists. Several times, in these thirteen pages, he +appeals to the practice or belief of the Church of England, once even +calling it "our church." + +This tract alone is sufficient refutation of an idle story that Milton +died a Roman Catholic, The story is not well vouched, being hearsay +three times removed. Milton's younger brother. Sir Christopher, is +said to have said so at a dinner entertainment. If he ever did say as +much, it must be set down to that peculiar form of credulity which +makes perverts think that every one is about to follow their +example. In Christopher Milton, "a man of no parts or ability, and a +superstitions nature" (Toland), such credulity found a congenial soil. + +The tract _Of true religion_ was Milton's latest published work. But +he was preparing for the press, at the time of his death, a more +elaborate theological treatise. Daniel Skinner, a nephew of his old +friend Cyriac, was serving as Milton's amanuensis in writing out a +fair copy. Death came before a third of the work of correction, 196 +pages out of 735, had been completed, of which the whole rough draft +consists. The whole remained in Daniel Skinner's hands in 1674. +Milton, though in his preface he if aware that his pages contain not a +little which will be unpalatable to the reigning opinion in religion, +would have dared publication, if he could have passed the censor. But +Daniel Skinner, who was a Fellow of Trinity, and had a career before +him, was not equally free. What could not appear in London, however, +might be printed at Amsterdam. Skinner accordingly put both the +theological treatise, and the epistles written by the Latin Secretary, +into the hands of Daniel Elzevir. The English government getting +intelligence of the proposed publication of the foreign correspondence +of the Parliament and the Protector, interfered, and pressure was put +upon Skinner, through the Master of Trinity, Isaac Barrow. Skinner +hastened to save himself from the fate which in 1681 befel Locke, and +gave up to the Secretary of State, not only the Latin letters, but the +MS. of the theological treatise. Nothing further was known as to the +fate of the MS. till 1823, when it was disinterred from one of the +presses of the old State Paper Office. The Secretary of State, Sir +Joseph Williamson, when he retired from office in 1678, instead of +carrying away his correspondence as had been the custom, left it +behind him. Thus it was that the _Treatise of Christian doctrine_ +first saw light, one hundred and fifty years after the author's death. + +In a work which had been written as a text-book for the use of +learners, there can be little scope for originality. And Milton +follows the division of the matter into heads usual in the manuals +then current. But it was impossible for Milton to handle the dry bones +of a divinity compendium without stirring them into life. And divinity +which is made to live, necessarily becomes unorthodox. + +The usual method of the school text-books of the seventeenth +century was to exhibit dogma in the artificial terminology of the +controversies of the sixteenth century. For this procedure Milton +substitutes the words of Scripture simply. The traditional terms of +the text-books are retained, but they are employed only as heads under +which to arrange the words of Scripture. This process, which in other +hands would be little better than index making, becomes here pregnant +with meaning. The originality which Milton voluntarily resigns, in +employing only the words of the Bible, he recovers by his freedom of +exposition. He shakes himself loose from the trammels of traditional +exposition, and looks at the texts for himself. The truth was + + Left only in those written records pure, + Though not but by the spirit understood. + + _Paradise Lost_, xii. 510. + +Upon the points which interested him most closely, Milton knew that +his understanding of the text differed from the standard of Protestant +orthodoxy. That God created matter, not out of nothing, but out of +Himself, and that death is, in the course of nature, total extinction +of being, though not opinions received, were not singular. More +startling, to European modes of thinking, is his assertion that +polygamy is not, in itself, contrary to morality, though it may be +inexpedient. The religious sentiment of his day was offended by his +vigorous vindication of the freewill of man against the reigning +Calvinism, and his assertion of the inferiority of the Son in +opposition to the received Athanasianism. He labours this point of the +nature of God with especial care, showing how greatly it occupied +his thoughts. He arranges his texts so as to exhibit in Scriptural +language the semi-Arian scheme, i.e. a scheme which, admitting the +co-essentiality, denies the eternal generation. Through all this +manipulation of texts we seem to see, that Milton is not the school +logician erecting a consistent fabric of words, but that he is +dominated by an imagination peopled with concrete personalities, and +labouring to assign their places to the Father and the Son as separate +agents in the mundane drama. The _De doctrina Christiana_ is the prose +counterpart of _Paradise Lost_ and _Regained_, a caput mortuum of the +poems, with every ethereal particle evaporated. + +In the royal injunctions of 1614, James I. had ordered students in the +universities not to insist too long upon compendiums, but to study the +Scriptures, and to bestow their time upon the fathers and councils. In +his attempt to express dogmatic theology in the words of Scripture, +Milton was unwittingly obeying this injunction. The other part of the +royal direction as to fathers and councils it was not in Milton's plan +to carry out. Neither indeed was it in his power, for he had not the +necessary learning. M. Scherer says that Milton "laid all antiquity, +sacred and profane, under contribution." So far is this from being the +case, that while he exhibits, in this treatise, an intimate knowledge +of the text of the canonical books, Hebrew and Greek, there is an +absence of that average acquaintance with Christian antiquity which +formed at that day the professional outfit of the episcopal divine. +Milton's references to the fathers are perfunctory and second-hand. +The only citation of Chrysostom, for instance, which I have noticed +is in these words: "the same is said to be the opinion of Chrysostom, +Luther, and other moderns." He did not esteem the judgment of +the fathers sufficiently, to deem them worth studying. In the +interpretation of texts, as in other matters of opinion, Milton +withdrew within the fortress of his absolute personality. + +I have now to relate the external history of the composition of +_Paradise Lost_. When Milton had to skulk for a time in 1660, he was +already in steady work upon the poem. Though a few lines of it were +composed as early as 1642, it was not till 1658 that he took up the +task of composition continuously. If we may trust our only authority +(Aubrey-Phillips), he had finished it in 1663, about the time of his +marriage. In polishing, re-writing, and writing out fair, much might +remain to be done, after the poem was, in a way, finished. It is +in 1665, that we first make acquaintance with _Paradise Lost_ in a +complete state. This was the year of the plague, known in our annals +as the Great Plague, to distinguish its desolating ravages from former +slighter visitations of the epidemic. Every one who could fled from +the city of destruction. Milton applied to his young friend Ellwood to +find him a shelter, Ellwood, who was then living as tutor in the house +of the Penningtons, took a cottage for Milton, in their neighbourhood, +at Chalfont St. Giles, in the county of Bucks, Not only the +Penningtons, but General Fleetwood had also his residence near this +village, and a report is mentioned by Howitt that it was Fleetwood who +provided the ex-secretary with a refuge. The society of neither of +these friends was available for Milton. For Fleetwood was a sentenced +regicide, and in July, Pennington and Ellwood were hurried off to +Aylesbury gaol by an indefatigable justice of the peace, who was +desirous of giving evidence of his zeal for the king's government. +That the Chalfont cottage "was not pleasantly situated," must have +been indifferent to the blind old man, as much so as that the +immediate neighbourhood, with its heaths and wooded uplands, +reproduced the scenery he had loved when he wrote _Il Allegro_. + +As soon as Ellwood was relieved from imprisonment, he returned to +Chalfont. Then it was that Milton put into his hands the completed +_Paradise Lost_, "bidding me take it home with me, and read it at my +leisure, and when I had so done, return it to him with my judgment +thereupon." On returning it, besides giving the author the benefit of +his judgment, a judgment not preserved, and not indispensable--the +Quaker made his famous speech, "Thou hast said much here of _Paradise +Lost_, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" Milton afterwards +told Ellwood that to this casual question was due his writing +_Paradise Regained_, We are not, however, to take this complaisant +speech quite literally, for it is highly probable that the later poem +was included in the original conception, if not in the scheme of the +first epic. But we do get from Ellwood's reminiscence a date for the +beginning of _Paradise Regained_, which must have been at Chalfont in +the autumn of 1665. + +When the plague was abated, and the city had become safely habitable, +Milton returned to Artillery Row. He had not been long back when +London was devastated by a fresh calamity, only less terrible than the +plague, because it destroyed the home, and not the life. The Great +Fire succeeded the Great Plague. 13,000 houses, two-thirds of the +city, were reduced to ashes, and the whole current of life and +business entirely suspended. Through these two overwhelming disasters, +Milton must have been supporting his solitary spirit by writing +_Paradise Regained_, _Samson Agonistes_, and giving the final touches +to _Paradise Lost_. He was now so wholly unmoved by his environment, +that we look in vain in the poems for any traces of this season of +suffering and disaster. The past and his own meditations were now all +in all to him; the horrors of the present were as nothing to a man who +had outlived his hopes. Plague and fire, what were they, after the +ruin of the noblest of causes? The stoical compression of _Paradise +Regained_ is in perfect keeping with the fact that it was in the +middle of the ruins of London that Milton placed his finished poem in +the hands of the licenser. + +For licenser there was now, the Archbishop of Canterbury to wit, for +religious literature. Of course the Primate read by deputy, usually +one of his chaplains. The reader into whose hands _Paradise Lost_ +came, though an Oxford man, and a cleric on his preferment, who had +written his pamphlet against the dissenters, happened to be one whose +antecedents, as Fellow of All Souls, and Proctor (in 1663), ensured +his taking a less pedantic and bigoted view of his duties. Still, +though Dryden's dirty plays would have encountered no objection before +such a tribunal, the same facilities were not likely to be accorded to +anything which bore the name of John Milton, ex-secretary to Oliver, +and himself an austere republican. Tomkyns--that was the young +chaplain's name--did stumble at a phrase in Book i, 598, + + With fear of change + Perplexes monarchs. + +There had been in England, and were to be again, times when men had +hanged for less than this. Tomkyns, who was sailing on the smooth sea +of preferment with a fair wind, did not wish to get into trouble, but +at last he let the book pass, Perhaps he thought it was only religious +verse written for the sectaries, which would never be heard of +at court, or among the wits, and that therefore it was of little +consequence what it contained. + +A publisher was found, notwithstanding that Paul's, or as it now was +again, St, Paul's-Churchyard had ceased to exist, in Aldersgate, which +lay outside the circuit of the conflagration. The agreement, still +preserved in the national museum, between the author, "John Milton, +gent, of the one parte, and Samuel Symons, printer, of the other +parte," is among the curiosities of our literary history. The +curiosity consists not so much in the illustrious name appended (not +in autograph) to the deed, as in the contrast between the present fame +of the book, and the waste-paper price at which the copyright is being +valued. The author received 5 l. down, was to receive a second 5 l. +when the first edition should be sold, a third 5 l. when the second, +and a fourth 5 l., when the third edition should be gone. Milton lived +to receive the second 5 l., and no more, 10 l. in all, for _Paradise +Lost_. I cannot bring myself to join in the lamentations of the +biographers over this bargain. Surely it is better so; better to know +that the noblest monument of English letters had no money value, than +to think of it as having been paid for at a pound the line. + +The agreement with Symons is dated 27 April, 1667, the entry in the +register of Stationers' Hall is 20th August. It was therefore in the +autumn of 1667 that _Paradise Lost_ was in the hands of the public. +We have no data for the time occupied in the composition of _Paradise +Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_. We have seen that the former poem +was begun at Chalfont in 1665, and it may be conjecturally stated that +_Samson_ was finished before September, 1667. At any rate, both the +poems were published together in the autumn of 1670. + +Milton had four years more of life granted him after this publication. +But he wrote no more poetry. It was as if he had exhausted his +strength in a last effort, in the Promethean agony of Samson, and knew +that his hour of inspiration was passed away. But, like all men who +have once tasted the joys and pangs of composition, he could not now +do without its excitement. The occupation, and the indispensable +solace of the last ten sad years, had been his poems. He would not +write more verse, when the oestrus was not on him, but he must write. +He took up all the dropped threads of past years, ambitious plans +formed in the fulness of vigour, and laid aside, but not abandoned. He +was the very opposite of Shelley, who could never look at a piece of +his own composition a second time, but when he had thrown it off at a +heat, rushed into something else. Milton's adhesiveness was such that +he could never give up a design once entered upon. In these four +years, as if conscious that his time was now nearly out, he laboured +to complete five such early undertakings. + +(1.) Of his _Compendium of Theology_ I have already spoken. He was +overtaken by death while preparing this for the press. + +(2.) His _History of Britain_ must hare cost him much labour, bestowed +upon comparison of the conflicting authorities. It is the record of +the studies he had made for his abandoned epic poem, and is evidence +how much the subject occupied his mind. + +The _History of Britain_, 1670, had been preceded by (3) a Latin +grammar, in 1669, and was followed by (4) a Logic on, the method of +Ramus, 1672. + +(5.) In 1673 he brought out a new edition of his early volume of +_Poems_. In this volume he printed for the first time the sonnets, and +other pieces, which had been written in the interval of twenty-seven +years, since the date of his first edition. Not, indeed, all the +sonnets which we now have. Four, in which Fairfax, Vane, Cromwell, and +the Commonwealth are spoken of as Milton would speak of them, were +necessarily kept back, and not put into print till 1694, by Phillips, +at the end of his life of his uncle. + +In proportion to the trouble which Milton's words cost him, was his +care in preserving them. His few Latin letters to his foreign friends +are remarkably barren either of fact or sentiment. But Milton liked +them well enough to have kept copies of them, and now allowed a +publisher, Brabazon Aylmer, to issue them in print, adding to them, +with a view to make out a volume, his college exercises, which he had +also preserved. + +Among the papers which he left at his death, were the beginnings of +two undertakings, either of them of overwhelming magnitude, which +he did not live to complete. We have seen that he taught his pupils +geography out of _Davity, Description de l'Univers_. He was not +satisfied with this, or with any existing compendium. They were all +dry; exact enough with their latitudes and longitudes, but omitted +such uninteresting stuff as manners, government, religion, &c. Milton +would essay a better system. All he had ever executed was Russia, +taking the pains to turn over and extract for his purpose all the best +travels in that country. This is the fragment which figures in his +Works as a _Brief History of Moscovia_. + +The hackneyed metaphor of Pegasus harnessed to a luggage trolley, +will recur to us when we think of the author of _L'Allegro_, setting +himself to compile a Latin lexicon. If there is any literary drudgery +more mechanical than another, it is generally supposed to be that of +making a dictionary. Nor had he taken to this industry as a resource +in age, when the genial flow of invention had dried up, and original +composition had ceased to be in his power. The three folio volumes of +MS. which Milton left were the work of his youth; it was a work which +the loss of eyesight of necessity put an end to. It is not Milton +only, but all students who read with an alert mind, reading to grow, +and not to remember, who have felt the want of an occupation which +shall fill those hours when mental vigilance is impossible, and +vacuity unendurable. Index-making or cataloguing has been the resource +of many in such hours. But it was not, I think, as a mere shifting of +mental posture that Milton undertook to rewrite Robert Stephens; it +was as part of his language training. Only by diligent practice and +incessant exercise of attention and care, could Milton have educated +his susceptibility to the specific power of words, to the nicety which +he attained beyond any other of our poets. Part of this education is +recorded in the seemingly withered leaves of his Latin Thesaurus, +though the larger part must have been achieved, not by a reflective +and critical collection of examples, but by a vital and impassioned +reading. + +Milton's complaint was what the profession of that day called gout. +"He would be very cheerful even in his gout fits, and sing," says +Aubrey. This gout returned again and again, and by these repeated +attacks wore out his resisting power. He died of the "gout struck in" +on Sunday, 8th November, 1674, and was buried, near his father, in the +chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. The funeral was attended, Toland +says, "by all his learned and great friends in London, not without a +friendly concourse of the vulgar." The disgusting profanation of the +leaden coffin, and dispersion of the poet's bones by the parochial +authorities, during the repair of the church in August, 1790, has been +denied, but it is to be feared the fact is too true. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +PARADISE LOST--PARADISE REGAINED--SAMSON AGONISTES + + +"Many men of forty," it has been said, "are dead poets;" and it might +seem that Milton, Latin secretary, and party pamphleteer, had died to +poetry about the fatal age. In 1645, when he made a gathering of his +early pieces for the volume published by Humphry Moseley, he wanted +three years of forty. That volume contained, besides other things, +_Comus_, _Lycidas_, _L'Allegro_, and _Il Penseroso_; then, when +produced, as they remain to this day, the finest flower of English +poesy. But, though thus like a wary husbandman, garnering his sheaves +in presence of the threatening storm, Milton had no intention of +bidding farewell to poetry. On the contrary, he regarded this volume +only as first-fruits, an earnest of greater things to come. + +The ruling idea of Milton's life, and the key to his mental history, +is his resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in +itself is singular, for it is probably shared by every young poet in +his turn. As every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his +friends to become Lord Chancellor, and every private in the French +army carries in his haversack the bâton of a marshal, so it is a +necessary ingredient of the dream on Parnassus, that it should embody +itself in a form of surpassing brilliance. What distinguishes Milton, +from the crowd of young ambition, "audax juventa," is the constancy +of resolve. He not only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, +keeping under the importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions +in middle life into the pursuit of place, profit, honour--the thorns +which spring up and smother the wheat--but carried out his dream in +its integrity in old age. He formed himself for this achievement, and +for no other. Study at home, travel abroad, the arena of political +controversy, the public service, the practice of the domestic virtues, +were so many parts of the schooling which was to make a poet. + +The reader who has traced with me thus far the course of Milton's +mental development will perhaps be ready to believe, that this idea +had taken entire possession of his mind from a very early age. The +earliest written record of it is of date 1632, In Sonnet II. This was +written as early as the poet's twenty-third year; and in these lines +the resolve is uttered, not as then just conceived, but as one long +brooded upon, and its non-fulfilment matter of self-reproach. + +If this sonnet stood alone, its relevance to a poetical, or even +a literary performance, might he doubtful. But at the time of its +composition it is enclosed in a letter to an unnamed friend, who seems +to have been expressing his surprise that the Cambridge B.A. was +not settling himself, now that his education was complete, to a +profession. Milton's apologetic letter is extant, and was printed +by Birch in 1738. It intimates that Milton did not consider his +education, for the purposes he had in view, as anything like complete. +It is not "the endless delight of speculation," but "a religious +advisement how best to undergo; not taking thought of being late, so +it give advantage to be more fit." He repudiates the love of learning +for its own sake; knowledge is not an end, it is only equipment for +performance. There is here no specific engagement as to the nature of +the performance. But what it is to be, is suggested by the enclosure +of the "Petrarchian stanza" (i.e. the sonnet). This notion that his +life was like Samuel's, a dedicated life, dedicated to a service +which required a long probation, recurs again more than once in his +writings. It is emphatically repeated, in 1641, in a passage of the +pamphlet No. 4:-- + + None hath by mote studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied + spirit none shall,--that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as + life and full license will extend. Neither do I think it shame to + covenant with any knowing reader that for some few years yet I may + go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, + as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the + vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some + vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, not + to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren + daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can + enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim + with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the life + of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select + reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous + acts and affairs. Till which in some measure be compassed, at mine + own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation, from + as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best + pledges that I can give them. + +In 1638, at the age of nine and twenty, Milton has already determined +that this lifework shall be a poem, an epic poem, and that its subject +shall probably be the Arthurian legend. + + Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina regea, + Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem, + Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae + Magnanimos heroas, et, o modo spiritus adsit! + Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub marte phalangas. + + May I find such a friend ... when, if ever, I shall revive + in song our native princes, and among them Arthur moving to + the fray even in the nether world, and when I shall, if only + inspiration be mine, break the Saxon bands before our Britons' + prowess. + +The same announcement is reproduced in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, 1639, +and, in Pamphlet No. 4, in the often-quoted words:-- + + Perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed at + under twenty, or thereabout, met with acceptance.... I began to + assent to them (the Italians) and divers of my friends here at home, + and not less to an inward prompting which now grows dally upon me, + that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in + this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might + perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not + willingly let it die. + +Between the publication of the collected _Poems_ in 1645, and the +appearance of _Paradise Lost_ in 1687, a period of twenty-two years, +Milton gave no public sign of redeeming this pledge. He seemed to his +cotemporaries to have renounced the follies of his youth, the gewgaws +of verse; and to have sobered down into the useful citizen, "Le bon +poëte," thought Malherbe, "n'est pas plus utile à l'état qu'un bon +joueur de quilles." Milton had postponed his poem, in 1641, till "the +land had once enfranchished herself from this impertinent yoke of +prelatry, under whose inquisitorious and tyrannical duncery no free +and splendid wit can flourish." Prelatry was swept away, and he asked +for further remand on account of the war. Peace was concluded, the +country was settled under the strong government of a Protector, and +Milton's great work did not appear. It was not even preparing. He was +writing not poetry but prose, and that most ephemeral and valueless +kind of prose, pamphlets, extempore articles on the topics of the day. +He poured out reams of them, in simple unconsciousness that they had +no influence whatever on the current of events. + +Nor was it that, during all these years, Milton was meditating in +secret what he could not bring forward in public; that he was only +holding back from publishing, because there was no public ready to +listen to his song. In these years Milton was neither writing nor +thinking poetry. Of the twenty-four sonnets indeed--twenty-four, +reckoning the twenty-lined piece, "The forcers of conscience," as +a sonnet--eleven belong to this period. But they do not form a +continuous series, such as do Wordsworth's _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, +nor do they evince a sustained mood of poetical meditation. On the +contrary, their very force and beauty consist in their being the +momentary and spontaneous explosion of an emotion welling up from the +depths of the soul, and forcing itself into metrical expression, as it +were, in spite of the writer. While the first eight sonnets, written +before 1645, are sonnets of reminiscence and intention, like those of +the Italians, or the ordinary English sonnet, the eleven sonnets of +Milton's silent period, from 1645 to 1658, are records of present +feeling kindled by actual facts. In their naked, unadorned simplicity +of language, they may easily seem, to a reader fresh from Petrarch, to +be homely and prosaic. Place them in relation to the circumstance +on which each piece turns, and we begin to feel the superiority for +poetic effect of real emotion over emotion meditated and revived. +History has in it that which can touch us more abidingly than any +fiction. It is this actuality which distinguishes the sonnets of +Milton from any other sonnets. Of this difference Wordsworth was +conscious when he struck out the phrase, "In his hand the _thing +became_ a trumpet." Macaulay compared the sonnets in their majestic +severity to the collects, They remind us of a Hebrew psalm, with its +undisguised outrush of rage, revenge, exultation, or despair, where +nothing is due to art or artifice, and whose poetry is the expression +of the heart, and not a branch of literature. It is in the sonnets we +most realise the force of Wordsworth's image-- + + Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea. + +We are not then to look in the sonnets for latent traces of the +suspended poetic creation They come from the other side of Milton's +nature, the political, not the artistic. They are akin to the prose +pamphlets, not to _Paradise Lost_. Just when the sonnets end, the +composition of the epic was taken in hand. The last of the sonnets (23 +in the ordinary numeration) was written in 1658, and it is to the same +year that our authority, Aubrey-Phillips, refers his beginning to +occupy himself with _Paradise Lost_. He had by this time settled the +two points about which he had been long in doubt, the subject, and the +form. Long before bringing himself to the point of composition, he had +decided upon the Fall of man as subject, and upon the narrative, or +epic, form, in preference to the dramatic. It is even possible that +a few isolated passages of the poem, as it now stands, may have been +written before. Of one such passage we know that it was written +fifteen or sixteen years before 1658, and while he was still +contemplating a drama. The lines are Satan's speech, _P. L._ iv. 32, +beginning,-- + + O, thou that with surpassing glory crowned. + +These lines, Phillips says, his uncle recited to him, as forming the +opening of his tragedy. They are modelled, as the classical reader +will perceive, upon Euripides. Possibly they were not intended for the +very first lines, since if Milton intended to follow the practice of +his model, the lofty lyrical tone of this address should have been +introduced by a prosaic matter-of-fact setting forth of the situation, +as in the Euripidean prologue. There are other passages in the poem +which have the air of being insititious in the place where they stand. +The lines in Book iv, now in question, may reasonably be referred to +1640-42, the date of those leaves in the Trinity College MS., in +which Milton has written down, with his own hand, various sketches of +tragedies, which might possibly be adopted as his final choice. + +A passage in _The Reason of Church Government_, written at the same +period, 1641, gives us the the fullest account of his hesitation. It +was a hesitation caused, partly by the wealth of matter which his +reading suggested to him, partly by the consciousness that he ought +not to begin in haste while each year was ripening his powers. Every +one who has undertaken a work of any length has made the experience, +that the faculty of composition will not work with ease, until the +reason is satisfied that the subject chosen is a congenial one. Gibbon +has told us himself of the many periods of history upon which he tried +his pen, even after the memorable 16 October, 1764, when he "sate +musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars +were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter." We know how many +sketches of possible tragedies Recine would make before he could +adopt one as the appropriate theme, on which he could work with that +thorough enjoyment of the labour, which is necessary to give life and +verve to any creation, whether of the poet or the orator. + +The leaves of the Trinity College MS., which are contemporary with his +confidence to the readers of his tract _Of Church Government_, exhibit +a list of nearly one hundred subjects, which, had occurred to him from +time to time as practicable subjects. From the mode of entry we see +that, already in 1641, a scriptural was likely to have tie preference +over a profane subject, and that among scriptural subjects _Paradise +Lost_ (the familiar title appears in this early note), stands out +prominently above the rest. The historical subjects are all taken from +native history, none are foreign, and all are from the time before +the Roman conquest. The scriptural subjects are partly from the Old, +partly from the New, Testament. Some of these subjects are named and +nothing more, while others are slightly sketched out. Among these +latter--are _Baptistes_, on the death of John the Baptist, and +_Christus Patiens_, apparently to be confined to the agony in the +garden. Of _Paradise Lost_ there are four drafts in greater detail +than any of the others. These drafts of the plot or action, though +none of them that which was finally adopted, are sufficiently near to +the action of the poem as it stands, to reveal to as the fact that the +author's imaginative conception of what he intended to produce was +generated, cast, and moulded, at a comparatively early age. The +commonly received notion, therefore, with which authors, as they age, +are wont to comfort themselves, that one of the greatest feats of +original invention achieved by man, was begun after fifty, must be +thus far modified. _Paradise Lost_ was _composed_ after fifty, but +was _conceived_ at thirty-two. Hence the high degree of perfection +realised in the total result. For there were combined to produce it +the opposite virtues of two distinct periods of mental development; +the daring imagination and fresh emotional play of early manhood, with +the exercised judgment and chastened taste of ripened years. We have +regarded the twenty-five years of Milton's life between 1641 and the +commencement of _Paradise Lost_, as time ill laid out upon inferior +work which any one could do, and which was not worth doing by any one. +Yet it may be made a question if in any other mode than by adjournment +of his early design, Milton could have attained to that union of +original strength with severe restraint, which distinguishes from all +other poetry, except that of Virgil, the three great poems of his old +age. If the fatigue of age is sometimes felt in _Paradise Regained_, +we feel in _Paradise Lost_ only (in the words of Chateaubriand), "la +maturité de l'âge à travers les passions des légères années; une +charme extraordinaire de vieillesse et de jeunesse." + +A still further inference is warranted by the Trinity College jottings +of 1641. Not the critics merely, but readers ready to sympathise, have +been sometimes inclined to wish that Milton had devoted his power to a +more human subject, in which the poet's invention could have had freer +play, and for which his reader's interest could have been more +ready. And it has been thought that the choice of a Biblical subject +indicates the narrowing effect of age, adversity, and blindness +combined. We now know that the Fall was the theme, if not determined +on, at least predominant in Milton's thoughts, at the age of +thirty-two. His ripened judgment only approved a selection made +in earlier years, and in days full of hope. That in selecting a +scriptural subject he was not In fact exercising any choice, but was +determined by his circumstances, is only what must be said of all +choosing. With all his originality, Milton was still a man of his +age. A Puritan poet, in a Puritan environment, could not have done +otherwise. But even had choice been in his power, it is doubtful if he +would have had the same success with a subject taken from history. + +First, looking at his public. He was to write in English. This, which +had at one time been matter of doubt, had at an early stage come to be +his decision. Sot had the choice of English been made for the sake +of popularity, which he despised. He did not desire to write for the +many, but for the few. But he was enthusiastically patriotic. He had +entire contempt for the shouts of the mob, but the English nation, +as embodied in the persons of the wise and good, he honoured and +reverenced with all the depth of his nature. It was for the sake of +his nation that he was to devote his life to a work, which was to +ennoble her tongue among the languages of Europe. + +He was then to write in English, for the English, not popularly, +but nationally. This resolution at once limited his subject. He who +aspires to be the poet of a nation is bound to adopt a hero who is +already dear to that people, to choose a subject and characters +which are already familiar to them. This is no rule of literary art +arbitrarily enacted by the critics, it is a dictate of reason, and has +been the practice of all the great national poets. The more obvious +examples will occur to every reader, But it may be observed that even +the Greek tragedians, who addressed a more limited audience than the +epic poets, took their plots from the best known legends touching the +fortunes of the royal houses of the Hellenic race. Now to the English +reader of the seventeenth century--and the same holds good to this +day--there were only two cycles of persons and events sufficiently +known beforehand to admit of being assumed by a poet. He must go +either to the Bible, or to the annals of England. Thus far Milton's +choice of subject was limited by the consideration of the public for +whom he wrote. + +Secondly, he was still farther restricted by a condition which the +nature of his own intelligence imposed upon himself. It was necessary +for Milton that the events and personages, which were to arouse and +detain his interests, should be real events and personages. The mere +play of fancy with the pretty aspects of things could not satisfy him; +he wanted to feel beneath him a substantial world of reality. He +had not the dramatist's imagination which can body forth fictitious +characters with such life-like reality that it can, and does itself, +believe in their existence. Macaulay has truly said that Milton's +genius is lyrical, not dramatic. His lyre will only echo real emotion, +and his imagination is only stirred by real circumstances. In his +youth he had been within the fascination of the romances of chivalry, +as well in their original form, as in the reproductions of Ariosto +and Spenser. While under this influence he had thought of seeking his +subject among the heroes of these lays of old minstrelsy. And as one +of his principles was that his hero must be a national hero, it was of +course upon the Arthurian cycle that his aspiration fixed. When he did +so, he no doubt believed at least the historical existence of Arthur. +As soon, however, as he came to understand the fabulous basis of the +Arthurian legend, it became unfitted for his use. In the Trinity +College MS. of 1641, Arthur has already disappeared from the list of +possible subjects, a list which contains thirty-eight suggestions of +names from British or Saxon history, such as Vortigern, Edward the +Confessor, Harold, Macbeth, &c. While he demanded the basis of reality +for his personages, he at the same time, with a true instinct, +rejected all that fell within the period of well-ascertained history. +He made the Conquest the lower limit of his choice. In this negative +decision against historical romance we recognise Milton's judgment, +and his correct estimate of his own powers. Those who have been +thought to succeed best in engrafting fiction upon history, Shakspeare +or Walter Scott, have been eminently human poets, and have achieved +their measure of success by investing some well-known name with the +attributes of ordinary humanity such as we all know it. This was +precisely what Milton could not have done. He had none of that +sympathy with which Shakspeare embraced all natural and common +affections of his brother men. Milton, burning as he did with a +consuming fire of passion, and yearning for rapt communion with select +souls, had withal an aloofness from ordinary men sad women, and a +proud disdain of commonplace joy and sorrow, which has led hasty +biographers and critics to represent him as hard, austere, an iron man +of iron mould. This want of interest in common life disqualified him +for the task of revivifying historic scenes. + +Milton's mental constitution, then, demanded in the material upon +which it was to work, a combination of qualities such as very few +subjects could offer. The events and personages must be real and +substantial, for he could not occupy himself seriously with airy +nothings and creatures of pure fancy. Yet they must not be such +events and personages as history had pourtrayed to us with well-known +characters, and all their virtues, faults, foibles, and peculiarities. +And, lastly, it was requisite that they should be the common property +and the familiar interest of a wide circle of English readers. + +These being the conditions required in the subject, it is obvious +that no choice was left to the poet in the England of the seventeenth +century but a biblical subject. And among the many picturesque +episodes which the Hebrew Scriptures present, the narrative of the +Fall stands out with a character of all-embracing comprehensiveness +which belongs to no other single event in the Jewish annals. The first +section of the book of Genesis clothes in a dramatic form the dogmatic +idea from which was developed in the course of ages the whole scheme +of Judaico-Christian anthropology. In this world-drama, Heaven above +and Hell beneath, the powers of light and those of darkness, are both +brought upon the scene in conflict with each other, over the fate +of the inhabitants of our globe, a minute ball of matter suspended +between two infinities. This gigantic and unmanageable material is so +completely mastered by the poet's imagination, that we are made to +feel at one and the same time the petty dimensions of our earth in +comparison with primordial space and almighty power, and the profound +import to us of the issue depending on the conflict. Other poets, of +inferior powers, have from time to time attempted, with different +degrees of success, some of the minor Scriptural histories; Bodmer, +the Noachian Deluge; Solomon Gessner, the Death of Abel, &c. And +Milton himself, after he had spent his full strength upon his greater +theme, recurred in _Samson Agonistes_ to one such episode, which he +had deliberately set aside before, as not giving verge enough for the +sweep of his soaring conception. + +These considerations duly weighed, it will be found, that the subject +of the Fall of Man was not so much Milton's choice as his necessity. +Among all the traditions of the peoples of the earth, there is not +extant another story which, could have been adequate to his demands. +Biographers may have been, somewhat misled by his speaking of himself +as "long choosing and beginning late." He did not begin till 1658, +when he was already fifty, and it has been somewhat hastily inferred +that he did not choose till the date at which he began, But, as we +have seen, he had already chosen at least as early as 1642, when, the +plan of a drama on the subject, and under the title, of _Paradise +Lost_ was fully developed. In the interval between 1642 and 1658, he +changed the form from a drama to an epic, but his choice remained +unaltered. And as the address to the sun (_Paradise Lost_, iv, 32) was +composed at the earlier of these dates, it appears that he had already +formulated even the rhythm and cadence of the poem that was to be. +Like Wordsworth's "Warrior"-- + + He wrought + Upon the plan that pleas'd his boyish thought. + +I have said that this subject of the Fall was Milton's necessity, +being the only subject which his mind, "in the spacious circuits of +her musing," found large enough. But as it was no abrupt or arbitrary +choice, so it was not forced upon him from without, by suggestion of +friends, or command of a patron, We must again remind ourselves that +Milton had a Calvinistic bringing up. And Calvinism in pious Puritan +souls of that fervent age was not the attenuated creed of the +eighteenth century, the Calvinism which went not beyond personal +gratification of safety for oneself, and for the rest damnation. When +Milton was being reared, Calvinism was not old and effete, a mere +doctrine. It was a living system of thought, and one which carried the +mind upwards towards the Eternal will, rather than downwards towards +my personal security. Keble has said of the old Catholic views, +founded on sacramental symbolism, that they are more poetical than +any other religious conception. But it must be acknowledged that a +predestinarian scheme, leading the cogitation upward to dwell upon +"the heavenly things before the foundation of the world," opens a +vista of contemplation and poetical framework, with which none other +in the whole cycle of human thought can compare. Not election +and reprobation as set out in the petty chicanery of Calvin's +_Institutes_, but the prescience of absolute wisdom revolving all the +possibilities of time, space, and matter. Poetry has been defined as +"the suggestion by the image of noble grounds for noble emotions," +and, in this respect, none of the world-epics--there are at most +five or six such in existence--can compete with _Paradise Lost_. +The melancholy pathos of Lucretius indeed pierces the heart with a +two-edged sword more keen than Milton's, but the compass of Lucretius' +horizon is much less, being limited to this earth and its inhabitants. +The horizon of _Paradise Lost_ is not narrower than all space, its +chronology not shorter than eternity; the globe of our earth becomes +a mere spot in the physical universe, and that universe itself a drop +suspended in the infinite empyrean. His aspiration had thus reached +"one of the highest arcs that human contemplation circling upwards can +make from the glassy sea whereon she stands" (_Doctr. and Disc_.), +Like his contemporary Pascal, his mind had beaten her wings against +the prison walls of human thought. + +The vastness of the scheme of _Paradise Lost_ may become more apparent +to us if we remark that, within its embrace, there to be equal place +for both the systems of physical astronomy which were current in the +seventeenth century. In England, about the time _Paradise Lost_ was +being written, the Copernican theory, which placed the sun in the +centre of our system, was already the established belief of the few +well-informed. The old Ptolemaic or Alphonsine system, which explained +the phenomena on the hypothesis of nine (or ten) transparent hollow +spheres wheeling round the stationary earth, was still the received +astronomy of ordinary people. These two beliefs, the one based on +science, though still wanting the calculation which Newton was to +supply to make it demonstrative, the other supported by the tradition +of ages, were, at the time we speak of, in presence of each other in +the public mind. They are in presence of each other also in Milton's +epic. And the systems confront each other in the poem, in much the +same relative position which they occupied in the mind of the public. +The ordinary, habitual mode of speaking of celestial phenomena is +Ptolemaic (see _Paradise Lost_, vii. 339; iii. 481). The conscious, +or doctrinal, exposition of the same phenomena is Copernican (see +_Paradise Lost_, viii. 122). Sharp as is the contrast between the two +systems, the one being the direct contradictory of the other, they are +lodged together, not harmonised, within the vast circuit of the poet's +imagination. The precise mechanism of an object so little as is +our world in comparison with the immense totality may be justly +disregarded. "De minimis non curat poeta." In the universe of being +the difference between a heliocentric and a geocentric theory of our +solar system is of as small moment, as the reconcilement of fixed +fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute is in the realm of absolute +intelligence. The one Is the frivolous pastime of devils; the other +the Great Architect + + Hath left to there disputes, perhaps to move + His laughter at their quaint opinions wide. + +As one, and the principal, inconsistency in Milton's presentment of +his matter has now been, mentioned, a general remark may be made upon +the conceptual incongruities in _Paradise Lost_. The poem abounds in +such, and the critics, from Addison downwards, have busied themselves +in finding out more and more of them. Milton's geography of the world +is as obscure and untenable as that of Herodotus. The notes of time +cannot stand together. To give an example: Eve says (_Paradise Lost_, +iv. 449)-- + + That day I oft remember, when from sleep + I first awak'd. + +But in the chronology of the poem, Adam himself, whose creation +preceded that of Eve, was but three days old at the time this +reminiscence is repeated to him. The mode in which the Son of God +is spoken of is not either consistent Athanasianism or consistent +Arianism. Above all there is an incessant confusion of material and +immaterial in the acts ascribed to the angels. Dr. Johnson, who wished +for consistency, would have had it preserved "by keeping immateriality +out of sight." And a general arraignment has been laid against Milton +of a vagueness and looseness of imagery, which contrasts unfavourably +with the vivid and precise detail of other poets, of Homer or of +Dante, for example. + +Now first, it must be said that Milton is not one of the poets of +inaccurate imagination. He could never, like Scott, have let the +precise picture of the swan on "still Saint Mary's lake" slip into the +namby-pamby "sweet Saint Mary's lake." When he intends a picture, he +is unmistakably distinct; his outline is firm and hard. But he is not +often intending pictures. He is not, like Dante, always seeing--he is +mostly thinking in a dream, or as Coleridge best expressed it, he is +not a picturesque, but a musical poet. The pictures in _Paradise Lost_ +are like the paintings on the walls of some noble hall--only part of +the total magnificence. He did not aim at that finish of minute parts +in which, each bit fits into every other. For it was only by such +disregard of minutiae that the theme could be handled at all. The +impression of vastness, the sense that everything, as Bishop Butler +says, "runs up into infinity," would have been impaired if he had +drawn attention to the details of his figures. Had he had upon his +canvas only a single human incident, with ordinary human agents, he +would have known, as well as other far inferior artists, how to secure +perfection of illusion by exactness of detail. But he had undertaken +to present, not the world of human experience, but a supernatural +world, peopled by supernatural beings, God and his Son, angels and +archangels, devils; a world in which Sin and Death, may be personified +without palpable absurdity. Even his one human pair are exceptional +beings, from whom we are prepared not to demand conformity to the laws +of life which now prevail in our world. Had he presented all these +spiritual personages in definite form to the eyes the result would +have been degradation. We should have had the ridiculous instead of +the sublime, as in the scene of the _Iliad_, where Diomede wounds +Aphrodite in the hand, and sends her crying home to her father. +Once or twice Milton has ventured too near the limit of material +adaptation, trying to explain _how_ angelic natures subsist, as in the +passage (_Paradise Lost_, v. 405) where Raphael tells Adam that angels +eat and digest food like man. Taste here receives a shock, because the +incongruity, which before was latent, is forced upon our attention. We +are threatened with being transported out of the conventional world +of Heaven, Hell, Chaos, and Paradise, to which we had well adapted +ourselves, into the real world in which we know that such beings could +not breathe and move. + +For the world of _Paradise Lost_ is an ideal, conventional world, +quite as much as the world of the _Arabian Nights_, or the world +of the chivalrous romance, or that of the pastoral novel. Not only +dramatic, but all, poetry is founded on illusion. We must, though it +be but for the moment, suppose it true. We must be transported out of +the actual world into that world in which the given scene is laid. It +is chiefly the business of the poet to effect this transportation, but +the reader (or hearer) must aid. "Willst du Dichter ganz verstehen, +musst in Dichter's Lande gehen." If the reader's imagination is not +active enough to assist the poet, he must at least not resist him. +When we are once inside the poet's heaven, our critical faculty may +justly require that what takes place there shall be consistent with +itself, with the laws of that fantastic world. But we may not begin by +objecting that it is impossible that such a world should exist. If, +in any age, the power of imagination is enfeebled, the reader becomes +more unable to make this effort; he ceases to co-operate with the +poet. Much of the criticism on _Paradise Lost_ which we meet with +resolves itself into a refusal on the part of the critic, to make +that initial abondonment to the conditions which the poet demands; +a determination to insist that his heaven, peopled with deities, +dominations, principalities, and powers, shall have the same material +laws which govern our planetary system. It is not, as we often hear it +said, that the critical faculty is unduly developed in the nineteenth +century. It is that the imaginative faculty fails us; and when that +is the case, criticism is powerless--it has no fundamental assumption +upon which its judgments can proceed, + +It is the triumph of Milton's skill to have made his ideal world +actual, if not to every English mind's eye, yet to a larger number of +minds than have ever been reached by any other poetry in our language. +Popular (in the common use of the word) Milton has not been, and +cannot be. But the world he created has taken possession of the public +mind. Huxley complains that the false cosmogony, which will not +yield, to the conclusions of scientific research, is derived from the +seventh, book of _Paradise Lost_, rather than, from Genesis. This +success Milton owes partly to his selection of his subject, partly to +his skill in handling it. In his handling, he presents his spiritual +existences with just so much relief as to endow them with life and +personality, and not with, that visual distinctness which would at +once reveal their spectral immateriality, and so give a shock to the +illusion. We might almost say of his personages that they are shapes, +"if shape it might be called, that shape had none." By his art of +suggestion by association, he does all he can to aid us to realise +his agents, and at the moment when distinctness would disturb, he +withdraws the object into a mist, and so disguises the incongruities +which he could not avoid. The tact that avoids difficulties inherent +in the nature of things, is an art which gets the least appreciation +either in life or in literature. + +But if we would have some measure of the skill which in _Paradise +Lost_ has made impossible beings possible to the imagination, we may +find it in contrasting them with the incarnated abstraction and spirit +voices, which we encounter at every turn in Shelley, creatures who +leave behind them no more distinct impression than that we have been +in a dream peopled with ghosts. Shelley, too, + + Voyag'd th' unreal, vast, unbounded deep + Of horrible confusion. + + _Paradise Lost_, x. 470. + +and left it the chaos which he found it. Milton has elicited from +similar elements a conception so life-like that his poetical version +has inseparably grafted itself upon, if it has not taken the place of, +the historical narrative of the original creation. + +So much Milton has effected by his skilful treatment. But the illusion +was greatly facilitated by his choice of subject. He had not to create +his supernatural personages, they were already there. The Father, and +the Son, the Angels, Satan, Baal and Moloch, Adam and Eve, were in +full possession of the popular imagination, and more familiar to it +than any other set of known names. Nor was the belief accorded to them +a half belief, a bare admission of their possible existence, such +as prevails at other times or in some countries. In the England of +Milton, the angels and devils of the Jewish Scriptures were more real +beings, and better vouched, than any historical personages could be. +The old chronicles were full of lies, but this was Bible truth. There +might very likely have been a Henry VIII, and he might have been such +as he is described, but at any rate he was dead and gone, while Satan +still lived and walked the earth, the identical Satan who had deceived +Eve. + +Nor was it only to the poetic public that his personages were real, +true, and living beings. The poet himself believed as entirely in +their existence as did his readers. I insist upon this point, because +one of the first of living critics has declared of _Paradise Lost_ +that it is a poem in which every artifice of invention, is consciously +employed, not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as +tenable by any living faith. (Ruskin, _Sesame and Lilies_, p. 138). On +the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the +character of the poet until we feel that throughout _Paradise Lost_, +as in _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson_, Milton felt himself to he +standing on the sure ground of fact and reality. It was not in +Milton's nature to be a showman, parading before an audience a +phantasmagoria of spirits, which he himself knew to be puppets tricked +up for the entertainment of an idle hour. We are told by Lockhart, +that the old man who told the story of Gilpin Horner to Lady Dalkeith +_bonâ fide_ believed the existence of the elf. Lady Dalkeith repeated +the tale to Walter Scott, who worked it up with consummate skill into +the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. This is a case of a really believed +legend of diablerie becoming the source of a literary fiction. Scott +neither believed in the reality of the goblin page himself, nor +expected his readers to believe it. He could not rise beyond the +poetry of amusement, and no poetry with only this motive can ever be +more than literary art. + +Other than this was Milton's conception of his own function. Of the +fashionable verse, such as was written in the Caroline age, or in +any age, he disapproved, not only because it was imperfect art, but +because it was untrue utterance. Poems that were raised "from the heat +of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from +the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming +parasite," were in his eyes treachery to the poet's high vocation. + + * * * * * + +Poetical powers "are the inspired gift of God rarely bestowed ... in +every nation, and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to +imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and +public civility, to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the +affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the +throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what +he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing +victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of +just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the +enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and +states from justice and God's true worship." + + * * * * * + +So he had written in 1642, and this lofty faith in his calling +supported him twenty years later, in the arduous labour of his attempt +to realise his own ideal. In setting himself down to compose _Paradise +Lost_ and _Regained_, he regarded himself not as an author, but as a +medium, the mouthpiece of "that eternal Spirit who can enrich with +all utterance and all knowledge: Urania, heavenly muse," visits him +nightly, + + And dictates to me Blumb'ring, or inspires + Easy my unpremeditated verse. + + _Paradise Lost_, ix. 24. + +Urania bestows the flowing words and musical sweetness; to God's +Spirit he looks to + + Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers + Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence + + Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell + Of things invisible to mortal sight. + + _Paradise Lost,/i>, iii, 50. + +The singers with whom he would fain equal himself are not Dante, or +Tasso, or, as Dryden would have it, Spenser, but + + Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides, + And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old. + +As he in equalled with these in misfortune--loss of sight--he would +emulate them in function. Orpheus and Musaeus are the poets he would +fain have as the companions of his midnight meditation (_Penseroso_). +And the function of the poet is like that of the prophet in the old +dispensation, not to invent, but to utter. It is God's truth which +passes His lips--lips hallowed by the touch of sacred fire. He is the +passive instrument through whom flows the emanation from on high; His +words are not his own, but a suggestion. Even for style Milton is +indebted to his "celestial patroness who deigns her nightly visitation +unimplor'd." + +Milton was not dependent upon a dubious tradition in the subject he +had selected. Man's fall and recovery were recorded in the Scriptures. +And the two media of truth, the internal and the external, as deriving +from the same source, must needs be in harmony. That the Spirit +enlightens the mind within, in this belief the Puritan saint, the +poet, and the prophet, who all met in Milton, were at one. That the +Old Testament Scriptures were also a revelation, from God, was an +article of faith which he had never questioned. Nor did he only +receive these books as conveying in substance a divine view of the +world's history, he regarded them as in the letter a transcript +of fact. If the poet-prophet would tell the story of creation or +redemption, he was thus restrained not only by the general outline and +imagery of the Bible, but by its very words. And here we must note the +skill of the poet in surmounting an added or artificial difficulty, in +the subject he had chosen as combined with his notion of inspiration. +He must not deviate in a single syllable from the words of the +Hebrew books. He must take up into his poem the whole of the sacred +narrative. This he must do, not merely because his readers would +expect such literal accuracy from him, but because to himself that +narrative was the very truth which he was, undertaking to deliver. +The additions which his fancy or inspiration might supply must be +restrained by this severe law, that they should be such as to aid the +reader's imagination to conceive how the event took place. They must +by no means be suffered to alter, disfigure, traduce the substance or +the letter of the revelation. This is what Milton has done. He has +told the story of creation in the very words of Scripture. The whole +of the seventh book, is little more than a paraphrase of a few verses +of Genesis. What he has added is so little incongruous with his +original, that most English men and women would probably have some +difficulty in discriminating in recollection the part they derive from +Moses, from that which they have added from the paraphrast. In Genesis +it is the serpent who tempts Eve, in virtue of his natural wiliness. +In Milton it is Satan who has entered into the body of a serpent, and +supplied the intelligence. Here indeed Milton was only adopting a +gloss, as ancient at least as the Book of Wisdom (ii. 24). But it is +the gloss, and not the text of Moses, which is in possession of +our minds, and who has done most to lodge it there, Milton or the +commentators? + +Again, it is Milton and not Moses who makes the serpent pluck and eat +the first apple from the tree. But Bp. Wilson comments upon the words +of Genesis (iii, 6) as though they contained this purely Miltonic +circumstance, + +It could hardly but he that one or two of the incidents which Milton +has supplied, the popular imagination has been unable to homologate. +Such an incident is the placing of artillery in the wars in heaven, We +reject this suggestion, and find it mars probability. But It would not +seam so Improbable to Milton's contemporaries; not only because it was +an article of the received poetic tradition (see _Ronsard_ 6, p. 40), +but also because fire-arms had not quite ceased to be regarded as a +devilish enginery of a new warfare, unfair in the knightly code of +honour, a base substitute of mechanism for individual valour. It +was gunpowder and not _Don Quixote_ which had destroyed, the age of +chivalry, + +Another of Milton's fictions which has been found too grotesque is the +change (_P, L._, x. 508) of the demons into serpents, who hiss their +Prince on his return from his embassy. Here it is not, I think, +so much the unnatural character of the incident itself, as its +gratuitousness which offends. It does not help us to conceive the +situation. A suggestion of Chateaubriand may therefore go some way +towards reconciling the reader even to this caprice of imagination. +It indicates, he says, the degradation of Satan, who, from the superb +Intelligence of the early scenes of the poem, is become at its close a +hideous reptile. He has not triumphed, but has failed, and is degraded +into the old dragon, who haunts among the damned. The braising of his +head has already commenced. + +The bridge, again, which Sin and Death construct (_Paradise Lost_, x. +300), leading from the mouth of hell to the wall of the world, has a +chilling effect upon the imagination of a modern reader. It does not +assist the conception of the cosmical system which we accept in the +earlier books. This clumsy fiction seems more at home in the grotesque +and lawless mythology of the Turks, or in the Persian poet Sadi, who +is said by Marmontel to have adopted it from the Turk. If Milton's +intention were to reproduce Jacob's ladder, he should, like Dante +(_Parad_, xxi. 25), have made it the means of communication between +heaven and earth. + +It is possible that Milton himself, after the experiment of _Paradise +Lost_ was fully before him, suspected that he had supplemented +too much for his purpose; that his imagery, which was designed to +illustrate history, might stand in its light. For in the composition +of _Paradise Regained_ (published 1671) he has adopted a much severer +style. In this poem he has not only curbed his imagination, but has +almost suppressed it. He has amplified, but has hardly introduced any +circumstance which is not in the original. _Paradise Regained_ is +little more than a paraphrase of the Temptation as found in the +synoptical gospels. It is a marvel of ingenuity that more than two +thousand lines of blank verse can have been constructed out of some +twenty lines of prose, without the addition of any invented incident, +or the insertion of any irrelevant digression. In the first three +books of _Paradise Regained_ there is not a single simile. Nor yet can +it be said that the version of the gospel narrative has the fault of +most paraphrases, viz., that of weakening the effect, and obliterating +the chiselled features of the original. Let a reader take _Paradise +Regained_ not as a theme used as a canvas for poetical embroidery, an +opportunity for an author to show off his powers of writing, but as +a _bonâ fide_ attempt to impress upon the mind the story of the +Temptation, and he will acknowledge the concealed art of the genuine +epic poet, bent before all things upon telling his tale. It will still +be capable of being alleged that the story told does not interest; +that the composition is dry, hard, barren; the style as of set purpose +divested of the attributes of poetry. It is not necessary indeed that +an epic should be in twelve books; but we do demand in an epic poem +multiplicity of character and variety of incident. In _Paradise +Regained_ there are only two personages, both of whom are +supernatural. Indeed, they can scarcely be called personages; the +poet, in his fidelity to the letter, not having thought fit to open +up the fertile vein of delineation which was afforded by the human +character of Christ. The speakers are no more than the abstract +principles of good and evil, two voices who hold a rhetorical +disputation through four books and two thousand lines. + +The usual explanation of the frigidity of _Paradise Regained_ is the +suggestion, which is nearest at hand, viz., that it is the effect +of age. Like Ben Jonson's _New Inn_, it betrays the feebleness of +senility, and has one of the most certain marks of that stage of +authorship, the attempt to imitate himself in those points in which he +was once strong. When "glad no more, He wears a face of joy, because +He has been glad of yore." Or it is an "oeuvre de lassitude," a +continuation, with the inevitable defect of continuations, that of +preserving the forms and wanting the soul of the original, like the +second parts of _Faust_, of _Don Quixote_, and of so many other books. + +Both these explanations of the inferiority of _Paradise Regained_ have +probability. Either of them may be true, or both may have concurred +to the common effect. In favour of the hypothesis of senility is the +fact, recorded by Phillips, that Milton "could not hear with patience +any such thing when related to him." The reader will please to note +that this is the original statement, which the critics have improved +into the statement that he preferred _Paradise Regained_ to _Paradise +Lost_. But his approval of his work, even if it did not amount to +preference, looks like the old man's fondness for his youngest and +weakest offspring. + +Another view of the matter, however, is at least possible. Milton's +theory as to the true mode of handling a biblical subject was, as I +have said, to add no more dressing, or adventitious circumstance, +than should assist the conception of the sacred verity. After he had +executed _Paradise Lost_, the suspicion arose that he had been too +indulgent to his imagination; that he had created too much. He would +make a second experiment, in which he would enforce his theory with +more vigour. In the composition of _Paradise Lost_ he must have +experienced that the constraint he imposed upon himself had generated, +as was said of Racine, "a plenitude of soul." He might infer that were +the compression carried still further, the reaction of the spirit +might be still increased. Poetry he had said long before should be +"simple, sensuous, impassioned" (_Tractate of Education_). Nothing +enhances passion like simplicity. So in _Paradise Regained_ Milton has +carried simplicity of dress to the verge of nakedness. It is probably +the most unadorned poem extant in any language. He has pushed severe +abstinence to the extreme point, possibly beyond the point, where a +reader's power is stimulated by the poet's parsimony. + +It may elucidate the intention of the author of _Paradise Regained_, +if we contrast it for a moment with a poem constructed upon the +opposite principle, that, viz., of the maximum of adornment, +Claudian's _Rape of Proserpine_ (A.D. 400) is one of the most rich +and elaborate poems ever written. It has in common with Milton the +circumstance that its whole action is contained in a solitary event, +viz., the carrying off of Proserpine from the vale of Henna by Pluto, +All the personages, too, are superhuman; and the incident itself +supernatural. Claudian's ambition was to overlay his story with the +gold and jewellery of expression and invention. Nothing is named +without being carved, decked, and coloured from the inexhaustible +resources of the poet's treasury. This is not done with ostentatious +pomp, as the hyperbolical heroes of vulgar novelists are painted, but +always with taste, which though lavish is discriminating. + +Milton, like Wordsworth, urged his theory of parsimony farther in +practice than he would have done, had he not been possessed by a +spirit of protest against prevailing error. Milton's own ideal was the +chiselled austerity of Greek tragedy. Bat he was impelled to overdo +the system of holding back, by his desire to challenge the evil +spirit which was abroad. He would separate himself not only from the +Clevelands, the Denhams, and the Drydens, whom he did not account as +poets at all, but even from the Spenserians. Thus, instead of severe, +he became rigid, and his plainness is not unfrequently jejune. + +"Pomp and ostentation of reading," he had once written, "is admired +among the vulgar; but, in matters of religion, he is learnedest who +is plainest." As Wordsworth had attempted to regenerate poetry by +recurring to nature and to common objects, Milton would revert to the +pure Word of God. He would present no human adumbration of goodness, +but Christ Himself. He saw that here absolute plainness was best. In +the presence of this unique Being silence alone became the poet. This +"higher argument" was "sufficient of itself" (_Paradise Lost_, ix., +42). + +There are some painters whose work appeals only to painters, and not +to the public. So the judgment of poets and critics has been more +favourable to _Paradise Regained_ than the opinion of the average +reader. Johnson thinks that "if it had been written, not by Milton, +but by some imitators, it would receive universal praise." Wordsworth +thought it "the most perfect in execution of anything written by +Milton." And Coleridge says of it, "in its kind it is the most perfect +poem extant." + +There is a school of critics which maintains that a poem is, like a +statue or a picture, a work of pure art, of which beauty is the only +characteristic of which the reader should be cognisant. And beauty is +wholly ideal, an absolute quality, out of relation to person, time, or +circumstance. To such readers _Samson Agonistes_ will seem tame, flat, +meaningless, and artificial. From the point of view of the critic of +the eighteenth century, it is "a tragedy which only ignorance would +admire and bigotry applaud" (Dr. Johnson). If, on the other hand, it +be read as a page of contemporary history, it becomes human, pregnant +with real woe, the record of an heroic soul, not baffled by temporary +adversity, but totally defeated by an irreversible fate, and +unflinchingly accepting the situation, in the firm conviction of the +righteousness of the cause. If fiction is truer than fact, fact is +more tragic than fiction. In the course of the long struggle of human +liberty against the church, there had been terrible catastrophes. +But the St. Bartholomew, the Revocation of the Edict, the Spanish +Inquisition, the rule of Alva in the Low Countries,--these and other +days of suffering and rebuke have been left to the dull pen of the +annalist, who has variously diluted their story in his literary +circumlocution office. The triumphant royalist reaction of 1680, +when the old serpent bruised the heel of freedom by totally crushing +Puritanism, is singular in this, that the agonised cry of the beaten +party has been preserved in a cotemporary monument, the intensest +utterance of the most intense of English poets--the _Samson +Agonistes_. + +In the covert representation, which we have in this drama, of the +actual wreck of Milton, his party, and his cause, is supplied that +real basis of truth which was necessary to inspire him to write. It +is of little moment that the incidents of Samson's life do not form +a strict parallel to those of Milton's life, or to the career of the +Puritan cause. The resemblance lies in the sentiment and situation, +not in the bare event. The glorious youth of the consecrated +deliverer, his signal overthrow of the Philistine foe with means so +inadequate that the hand of God was manifest in the victory; his final +humiliation, which he owed to his own weakness and disobedience, and +the present revelry and feasting of the uncircumsised Philistines in +the temple of their idol,--all these things together constitute a +parable of which no reader of Milton's day could possibly mistake the +interpretation. More obscurely adumbrated is the day of vengeance, +when virtue should return to the repentant backslider, and the +idolatrous crew should be smitten with a swift destruction in the +midst of their insolent revelry. Add to these the two great personal +misfortunes of the poet's life, his first marriage with a Philistine +woman, out of sympathy with him or his cause, and his blindness; and +the basis of reality becomes so complete, that the nominal personages +of the drama almost disappear behind the history which we read through +them. + +But while for the biographer of Milton _Samson Agonistes_ is charged +with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive +tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is +languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date +of the composition of the _Samson_ be 1663, this may have been the +result of weariness after the effort of _Paradise Lost_. If this drama +were composed in 1667, it would be the author's last poetical effort, +and the natural explanation would then be that his power over language +was failing. The power of metaphor, i.e. of indirect expression, is, +according to Aristotle, the characteristic of genius. It springs from +vividness of conception of the thing spoken of. It is evident that +this intense action of the presentative faculty is no longer at the +disposal of the writer of _Samson_. In _Paradise Regained_ we are +conscious of a purposed restraint of strength. The simplicity of its +style is an experiment, an essay of a new theory of poetic words. The +simplicity of _Samson Agonistes_ is a flagging of the forces, a drying +up of the rich sources from which had once flowed the golden stream of +suggestive phrase which makes _Paradise Lost_ a unique monument of the +English language. I could almost fancy that the consciousness of decay +utters itself in the lines (594)-- + + I feel my genial spirits droop, + My hopes all flat, nature within me seems + In all her functions weary of herself, + My race of glory run, and race of shame, + And I shall shortly be with them that rest. + +The point of view I have insisted on is that Milton conceives a poet +to be one who employs his imagination to make a revelation of truth, +truth which the poet himself entirely believes. One objection to +this point of view will at once occur to the reader, the habitual +employment in both poems of the fictions of pagan mythology. This is +an objection as old as Miltonic criticism. The objection came from +those readers who had no difficulty in realising the biblical scenes, +or in accepting demoniac agency, but who found their imagination +repelled by the introduction of the gods of Greece or Rome. It is not +that the biblical heaven and the Greek Olympus are incongruous, but +it is that the unreal is blended with the real, in a way to destroy +credibility. + +To this objection the answer has been supplied by De Quincey. To +Milton the personages of the heathen Pantheon were not merely familiar +fictions or established poetical properties; they were evil spirits. +That they were so was the creed of the early interpreters. In their +demonology, the Hebrew and the Greek poets had a common ground. Up to +the advent of Christ, the fallen angels had been permitted to delude +mankind. To Milton, as to Jerome, Moloch was Mars, and Chemosh +Priapus. Plato knew of hell as Tartarus, and the battle of the giants +in Hesiod is no fiction, but an obscured tradition of the war once +waged in heaven. What has been adverse to Milton's art of illusion is, +that the belief that the gods of the heathen world were the rebellious +angels has ceased to be part of the common creed of Christendom. +Milton was nearly the last of our great writers who was fully +possessed of the doctrine. His readers now no longer share it with +the poet. In Addison's time (1712) some of the imaginary persons in +_Paradise Lost_ were beginning to make greater demands upon the faith +of readers, than those cool rationalistic times could meet. + +There is an element of decay and death in poems which we vainly style +immortal. Some of the sources of Milton's power are already in process +of drying up. I do not speak of the ordinary caducity of language, in +virtue of which every effusion of the human spirit is lodged in a body +of death. Milton suffers little as yet from this cause. There are few +lines in his poems which are less intelligible now, than they were +at the time they were written. This is partly to be ascribed to his +limited vocabulary, Milton, in his verse, using not more than eight +thousand words, or about half the number used by Shakespeare. Nay, the +position of our earlier writers has been improved by the mere spread +of the English language over a wider area. Addison apologised for +_Paradise Lost_ falling short of the _Aeneid_, because of the +inferiority of the language in which it was written. "So divine a poem +in English is like a stately palace built of brick." The defects of +English for purposes of rhythm and harmony are as great now as they +ever were, but the space that our speech fills in the world is vastly +increased, and this increase of consideration is reflected back upon +our older writers. + +But if, as a treasury of poetic speech, _Paradise Lost_ has gained by +time, it has lost far more as a storehouse of divine truth. We at this +day are better able than ever to appreciate its force of expression, +its grace of phrase, its harmony of rhythmical movement, but it is +losing its hold over our imagination. Strange to say, this failure +of vital power in the constitution of the poem is due to the very +selection of subject by which Milton sought to secure perpetuity. Not +content with being the poet of men, and with describing human passions +and ordinary events, he aspired to present the destiny of the whole +race of mankind, to tell the story of creation, and to reveal the +councils of heaven and hell. And he would raise this structure upon no +unstable base, but upon the sure foundation of the written word. It +would have been a thing incredible to Milton that the hold of the +Jewish Scriptures over the imagination of English men and women could +ever be weakened. This process, however, has already commenced. The +demonology of the poem has already, with educated readers, passed from +the region of fact into that of fiction. Not so universally, but with +a large number of readers, the angelology can be no more than what the +critics call machinery. And it requires a violent effort from any +of our day to accommodate their conceptions to the anthropomorphic +theology of _Paradise Lost_. Were the sapping process to continue at +the same rate for two more centuries, the possibility of epic illusion +would be lost to the whole scheme and economy of the poem. Milton +has taken a scheme of life for life itself. Had he, in the choice of +subject, remembered the principle of the Aristotelean Poetic (which +he otherwise highly prized), that men in action are the poet's proper +theme, he would have raised his imaginative fabric on a more permanent +foundation; upon the appetites, passions, and emotions of men, their +vices and virtues, their aims and ambitions, which are a far more +constant quantity than any theological system. This perhaps was what +Goethe meant, when he pronounced the subject of _Paradise Lost_, to be +"abominable, with a fair outside, but rotten inwardly." + +Whatever fortune may be in store for _Paradise Lost_ in the time to +come, Milton's choice of subject was, at the time he wrote, the only +one which offered him the guarantees of reality, authenticity, and +divine truth, which he required. We need not therefore search the +annals of literature to find the poem which may have given the first +suggestion of the fall of man as a subject. This, however, has been +done by curious antiquaries, and a list of more than two dozen authors +has been made, from one or other of whom Milton may have taken either +the general idea or particular hints for single incidents. Milton, +without being a very wide reader, was likely to have seen the _Adamus +Exul_ of Grotius (1601), and he certainly had read Giles Fletcher's +_Christ's Victory and Triumph_ (1610). There are traces of verbal +reminiscence of Sylvester's translation of _Du Bartas_. But out of the +long catalogue of his predecessors there appear only three, who can +claim to have conceived the same theme with anything like the same +breadth, or on the same scale as Milton has done. These are the +so-called Caedmon, Andreini, and Vondel. + +1. The anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem which passes under the name of +Caedmon has this one point of resemblance to the plot of _Paradise +Lost_, that in it the seduction of Eve is Satan's revenge for his +expulsion from heaven. As Francis Junius was much occupied upon this +poem of which he published the text in 1655, it is likely enough that +he should have talked of it with his friend Milton. + +2. Voltaire related that Milton during his tour in Italy (1638) had +seen performed _L'Adamo_, a sacred drama by the Florentine Giovanni +Battista Andreini, and that he "took from that ridiculous trifle" the +hint of the "noblest product of human imagination." Though Voltaire +relates this as a matter of fact, it is doubtful if it be more than an +_on dit_ which he had picked up in London society. Voltaire could not +have seen Andreini's drama, for it is not at all a ridiculous trifle. +Though much of the dialogue is as insipid as dialogue in operettas +usually is, there is great invention in the plot, and animation in +the action. Andreini is incessantly offending against taste, and is +infected with the vice of the Marinists, the pursuit of _concetti_, or +far-fetched analogies between things unlike. His infernal personages +are grotesque and disgusting, rather than terrible; his scenes in +heaven childish--at once familiar and fantastic, in the style of the +Mysteries of the age before the drama. With all these faults the +_Adamo_ is a lively and spirited representation of the Hebrew legend, +and not unworthy to have been the antecedent of _Paradise Lost_. There +is no question of plagiarism, for the resemblance is not even that of +imitation or parentage, or adoption. The utmost that can be conceded +is to concur in Hayley's opinion that, either in representation or in +perusal, the _Adamo_ of Andreini had made an impression on the mind of +Milton; had, as Voltaire says, revealed to him the hidden majesty of +the subject. There had been at least three editions of the _Adamo_ by +1641, and Milton may have brought one of these with him, among the +books which he had shipped from Venice, even, if he had not seen the +drama on the Italian stage, or had not, as Todd suggests, met Andreini +in person. + +So much appears to me to be certain from the internal evidence of the +two compositions as they stand. But there are further some slight +corroborative circumstances, (i.) The Trinity College sketch, so often +referred to, of Milton's scheme when it was intended to be dramatic, +keeps much more closely, both in its personages and in its ordering, +to Andreini. (ii.) In Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, a compilation in +which he had his uncle's help, Andreini is mentioned as author "of +a fantastic poem entitled Olivastro, which was printed at Bologna, +1642." If Andreini was known to Edward Phillips, the inference is that +he was known to Milton. + +3. Lastly, though external evidence is here wanting, it cannot be +doubted that Milton was acquainted with the _Lucifer_ of the Dutch +poet, Joost van den Vondel, which appeared in 1654. This poem is a +regular five-act drama in the Dutch language, a language which Milton +was able to read. In spite of commercial rivalry and naval war there +was much intercourse between the two republics, and Amsterdam books +came in regular course to London. The Dutch drama turns entirely on +the revolt of the angels, and their expulsion from heaven, the fall of +man being but a subordinate incident. In _Paradise Lost_ the relation +of the two events is inverted, the fall of the angels being there an +episode, not transacted, but told by one of the personages of the +epic. It is therefore only in one book of _Paradise Lost_, the sixth, +that the influence of Vondel can be looked for. There may possibly +occur in other parts of our epic single lines of which an original may +be found in Vondel's drama. Notably such a one is the often-quoted-- + + Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. + _Paradise Lost_, i. 263. + +which is Vondel's-- + + En liever d'eerste Vorst in eenigh lager hof + Dan in't gezalight licht de tweede, of noch een minder! + +But it is in the sixth book only in which anything more than a verbal +similarity is traceable. According to Mr. Gosse, who has given an +analysis, with some translated extracts, of Vondel's _Lucifer_, the +resemblances are too close and too numerous to be mere coincidences. +Vondel is more human than Milton, just where human attributes are +unnatural, so that heaven is made to seem like earth, while in +_Paradise Lost_ we always feel that we are in a region aloft. Miltonic +presentation has a dignity and elevation, which is not only wanting +but is sadly missed in the Dutch drama, even the language of which +seems common and familiar. + +The poems now mentioned form, taken together, the antecedents of +_Paradise Lost_. In no one instance, taken singly, is the relation of +Milton to a predecessor that of imitation, not even to the extent +in which the Aeneid, for instance, is an imitation of the Iliad and +Odyssey. The originality of Milton lies not in his subject, but in his +manner; not in his thoughts, but in his mode of thinking. His story +and his personages, their acts and words, had been the common property +of all poets since the fall of the Roman Empire. Not only the three +I have specially named had boldly attempted to set forth a mythical +representation of the origin of evil, but many others had fluttered +round the same central object of poetic attraction. Many of these +productions Milton had read, and they had made their due impression on +his mind according to their degree of force. When he began to compose +_Paradise Lost_ he had the reading of a life-time behind him. His +imagination worked upon an accumulated store, to which books, +observation, and reflection had contributed in equal proportions. He +drew upon this store without conscious distinction of its sources. Not +that this was a recollected material, to which the poet had recourse +whenever invention failed him; it was identified with himself. His +verse flowed from his own soul, but his was a soul which had grown +up nourished with the spoil of all the ages. He created his epic, as +metaphysicians have said that God created the world, by drawing it out +of himself, not by building it up out of elements supplied _ab extra_. + +The resemblances to earlier poets, Greek, Latin, Italian, which could +be pointed out in _Paradise Lost_, were so numerous that in 1695, only +twenty-one years after Milton's death, an editor, one Patrick Hume, a +schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of London, was employed by Tonson +to point out the imitations in an annotated edition. From that time +downwards, the diligence of our literary antiquaries has been busily +employed in the same track of research, and it has been extended to +the English poets, a field which was overlooked, or not known to the +first collector. The result is a valuable accumulation of parallel +passages, which have been swept up into our _variorum_ Miltons, and +make _Paradise Lost_, for English phraseology, what Virgil was for +Latin in the middle ages, the centre round which the study moves. The +learner, who desires to cultivate his feeling for the fine shades +and variations of expression, has here a rich opportunity, and will +acknowledge with gratitude the laborious services of Newton, Pearce, +the Wartons, Todd, Mitford, and other compilers. But these heaped-up +citations of parallel passages somewhat tend to hide from us the +secret of Miltonic language. We are apt to think that the magical +effect of Milton's words has been produced by painfully inlaying +tesserae of borrowed metaphor--a mosaic of bits culled from extensive +reading, carried along by a retentive memory, and pieced together +so as to produce a new whole, with the exquisite art of a Japanese +cabinet-maker. It is sometimes admitted that Milton was a plagiary, +but it is urged in extenuation that his plagiarisms were always +reproduced in finer forms. + +It is not in the spirit of vindicating Milton, but as touching the +mystery of metrical language, that I dwell a few moments upon this +misconception. It is true that Milton has a way of making his own even +what he borrows. While Horace's thefts from Alcaeus or Pindar are +palpable, even from the care which he takes to Latinise them, Milton +cannot help transfusing his own nature into the words he adopts. But +this is far from all. When Milton's widow was asked "if he did not +often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon +him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness, that +he stole from nobody but the muse who inspired him." This is more +true than she knew. It is true there are many phrases or images in +_Paradise Lost_ taken from earlier writers--taken, not stolen, for the +borrowing is done openly. When Adam, for instance, begs Raphael to +prolong his discourse deep into night,-- + + Sleep, listening to thee, will watch; + Or we can bid his absence, till thy song + End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine; + +we cannot be mistaken, in saying that we have here a conscious +reminiscence of the words of Alcinous to Ulysses in the eleventh book +of the Odyssey. Such imitation is on the surface, and does not touch +the core of that mysterious combination of traditive with original +elements in diction, which Milton and Virgil, alone of poets known to +us, have effected. Here and there, many times, in detached +places, Milton has consciously imitated. But, beyond this obvious +indebtedness, there runs through the whole texture of his verse a +suggestion of secondary meaning, a meaning which has been accreted to +the words, by their passage down the consecrated stream of classical +poetry. Milton quotes very little for a man of much reading. He says +of himself (_Judgment of Bucer_) that he "never could delight in long +citations, much less in whole traductions, whether it be natural +disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of +what God made mine own, and not a translator." And the observation +is as old as Bishop Newton, that "there is scarce any author who has +written so much, and upon such various subjects, and yet quotes so +little from his contemporary authors." It is said that "he could repeat +Homer almost all without book." But we know that common minds are +apt to explain to themselves the working of mental superiority, by +exaggerating the power of memory. Milton's own writings remain +a sufficient evidence that his was not a verbal memory. And, +psychologically, the power of imagination and the power of verbal +memory, are almost always found in inverse proportion. + +Milton's diction is the elaborated outcome of all the best words of +all antecedent poetry, not by a process of recollected reading and +storage, but by the same mental habit by which we learn to speak our +mother tongue. Only, in the case of the poet, the vocabulary acquired +has a new meaning superadded to the words, from the occasion on which +they have been previously employed by others. Words, over and above +their dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has +gathered round them by reason of their employment through a hundred +generations of song. In the words of Mr. Myers, "without ceasing to be +a logical step in the argument, a phrase becomes a centre of +emotional force. The complex associations which it evokes, modify +the associations evoked by other words in the same passage, in a way +distinct from logical or grammatical connection." The poet suggests +much more than he says, or as Milton himself has phrased it, "more is +meant than meets the ear." + +For the purposes of poetry a thought is the representative of many +feelings, and a word is the representative of many thoughts. A single +word may thus set in motion in us the vibration of a feeling first +consigned to letters 3000 years ago. For oratory words should be +winged, that they may do their work of persuasion. For poetry words +should be freighted, with associations of feeling, that they may +awaken sympathy. It is the suggestive power of words that the poet +cares for, rather than their current denotation. How laughable are the +attempts of the commentators to interpret a line in Virgil as they +would a sentence in Aristotle's _Physics!_ Milton's secret lies in +his mastery over the rich treasure of this inherited vocabulary. He +wielded it as his own, as a second mother-tongue, the native and +habitual idiom of his thought and feeling, backed by a massive frame +of character, and "a power which is got within me to a passion." +(_Areopagitica_) + +When Wordsworth came forward at the end of the eighteenth century with +his famous reform of the language of English poetry, the Miltonic +diction was the current coin paid out by every versifier. Wordsworth +revolted against this dialect as unmeaning, hollow, gaudy, and +inane. His reform consisted in dropping the consecrated phraseology +altogether, and reverting to the common language of ordinary life. +It was necessary to do this in order to reconnect poetry with the +sympathies of men, and make it again a true utterance instead of the +ingenious exercise in putting together words, which it had become. +In projecting this abandonment of the received tradition, it may +be thought that Wordsworth was condemning the Miltonic system of +expression in itself. But this was not so. Milton's language had +become in the hands of the imitators of the eighteenth century sound +without sense, a husk without the kernel, a body of words without the +soul of poetry. Milton had created and wielded an instrument which was +beyond the control of any less than himself. He used it as a living +language; the poetasters of the eighteenth century wrote it as a dead +language, as boys make Latin verses. Their poetry is to _Paradise +Lost_, as a modern Gothic restoration is to a genuine middle-age +church. It was against the feeble race of imitators, and not against +the master himself, that the protest of the lake poet was raised. +He proposed to do away with the Miltonic vocabulary altogether, not +because it was in itself vicious, but because it could now only be +employed at secondhand. + +One drawback there was attendant upon the style chosen by Milton, viz. +that it narrowly limited the circle of his readers. All words are +addressed to those who understand them. The Welsh triads are not for +those who have not learnt Welsh; an English poem is only for those +who understand English. But of understanding English there are many +degrees; it requires some education to understand literary style at +all. A large majority of the natives of any country possess, and use, +only a small fraction of their mother tongue. These people may be left +out of the discussion. Confining ourselves only to that small part of +our millions which we speak of as the educated classes, that is those +whose schooling is carried on beyond fourteen years of age, it will +be found that only a small fraction of the men, and a still smaller +fraction of the women, fully apprehend the meaning of words. This is +the case with what is written in the ordinary language of books. +When we pass from a style in which words have only their simple +signification, to a style of which the effect depends on the +suggestion of collateral association, we leave behind the majority +even of these few. This is what is meant by the standing charge +against Milton that he is too learned. + +It is no paradox to say that Milton was not a learned man. Such men +there were in his day, Usher, Selden, Voss, in England; in Holland, +Milton's adversary Salmasius, and many more. A learned man was one +who could range freely and surely over the whole of classical and +patristic remains in the Greek and Latin languages (at least), with +the accumulated stores of philological, chronological, historical +criticism, necessary for the interpretation of those remains. Milton +had neither made these acquisitions, nor aimed at them. He even +expresses himself, in his vehement way, with contempt of them. +"Hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk," "marginal stuffings," +"horse-loads of citations and fathers," are some of his petulant +outbursts against the learning that had been played upon his position +by his adversaries. He says expressly that he had "not read the +Councils, save here and there" (_Smectymnuus_). His own practice had +been "industrious and select reading." He chose to make himself a +scholar rather than a learned man. The aim of his studies was to +improve faculty, not to acquire knowledge. "Who would be a poet must +himself be a true poem;" his heart should "contain of just, wise, +good, the perfect shape." He devoted himself to self-preparation with +the assiduity of Petrarch or of Goethe, "In wearisome labour and +studious watchings I have tired out almost a whole youth." "Labour and +intense study I take to be my portion in this life." He would know, +not all, but "what was of use to know," and form himself by assiduous +culture. The first Englishman to whom the designation of our series, +_Men of Letters_, is appropriate, Milton was also the noblest example +of the type. He cultivated, not letters, but himself, and sought to +enter into possession of his own mental kingdom, not that he might +reign there, but that he might royally use its resources in building +up a work, which should bring honour to his country and his native +tongue. + +The style of _Paradise Lost_ is then only the natural expression of +a soul thus exquisitely nourished upon the best thoughts and finest +words of all ages. It is the language of one who lives in the +companionship of the great and the wise of past time. It is inevitable +that when such a one speaks, his tones, his accent, the melodies of +his rhythm, the inner harmonies of his linked thoughts, the grace of +his allusive touch, should escape the common ear. To follow Milton one +should at least have tasted the same training through which he put +himself. "Te quoque dignum finge deo." The many cannot see it, and +complain that the poet is too learned. They would have Milton talk +like Bunyan or William Cobbett, whom they understand. Milton did +attempt the demagogue in his pamphlets, only with the result of +blemishing his fame and degrading his genius. The best poetry is that +which calls upon us to rise to it, not that which writes down to us. + +Milton knew that his was not the road to popularity. He thirsted for +renown, but he did not confound renown with vogue. A poet has his +choice between the many and the few; Milton chose the few. "Paucis +hujusmodi lectoribus contentus," is his own inscription in a copy +of his pamphlets sent by him to Patrick Young. He derived a stern +satisfaction from the reprobation with which the vulgar visited him. +His divorce tracts were addressed to men who dared to think, and ran +the town "numbering good intellects." His poems he wished laid up +in the Bodleian Library, "where the jabber of common people cannot +penetrate, and whence the base throng of readers keep aloof" (_Ode +to Rouse_). If Milton resembled a Roman republican in the severe and +stoic elevation of his character, he also shared the aristocratic +intellectualism of the classical type. He is in marked contrast to the +levelling hatred of excellence, the Christian trades-unionism of the +model Catholic of the mould of S. François de Sales whose maxim +of life is "marchons avec la troupe de nos frères et compagnons, +doucement, paisiblement, et amiablement." To Milton the people are-- + + But a herd confus'd, + A miscellaneous rabble, who extol + Things vulgar. + + _Paradise Regained_, iii. 49. + +At times his indignation carries him past the courtesies of +equal speech, to pour out the vials of prophetic rebuke, when he +contemplates the hopeless struggle of those who are the salt of the +earth, "amidst the throng and noises of vulgar and irrational men" +(_Tenure of Kings_), and he rates them to their face as "owls and +cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs" (_Sonnet_ xii.); not because they will +not listen to him, but "because they "hate learning more than toad or +asp" (_Sonnet_ ix.). + +Milton's attitude must be distinguished from patrician pride, or the +_noli-me-tangere_ of social exclusiveness. Nor, again, was it, like +Callimachus's, the fastidious repulsion of a delicate taste for the +hackneyed in literary expression; it was the lofty disdain of aspiring +virtue for the sordid and ignoble. + +Various ingredients, constitutional or circumstantial, concurred +to produce this repellent or unsympathetic attitude in Milton. +His dogmatic Calvinism, from the effects of which his mind never +recovered--a system which easily disposes to a cynical abasement of +our fellow-men--counted for something. Something must be set down to +habitual converse with the classics--a converse which tends to impart +to character, as Platner said of Godfrey Hermann, "a certain grandeur +and generosity, removed from the spirit of cabal and mean cunning +which prevail among men of the world." His blindness threw him out of +the competition of life, and back upon himself, in a way which was +sure to foster egotism. These were constitutional elements of that +aloofness from men which characterised all his utterance. These +disposing causes became inexorable fate, when, by the turn of the +political wheel of fortune, he found himself alone amid the mindless +dissipation and reckless materialism of the Restoration. He felt +himself then at war with human society as constituted around him, and +was thus driven to withdraw himself within a poetic world of his own +creation. + +In this antagonism of the poet to his age much was lost; much energy +was consumed in what was mere friction. The artist is then most +powerful when he finds himself in accord with the age he lives in. The +plenitude of art is only reached when it marches with the sentiments +which possess a community. The defiant attitude easily slides into +paradox, and the mind falls in love with its own wilfulness. The +exceptional emergence of Milton's three poems, _Paradise Lost, +Regained_, and _Samson_, deeply colours their context. The greatest +achievements of art--in their kinds have been the capital specimens of +a large crop; as the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are the picked lines out of +many rhapsodies, and Shakespeare the king of an army of contemporary +dramatists. Milton was a survival, felt himself such, and resented it. + + Unchang'd, + ....Though Fall'n on evil days, + On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues; + In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, + And solitude. + + _Paradise Lost_, vii. 24. + +Poetry thus generated we should naturally expect to meet with more +admiration than sympathy. And such, on the whole, has been Milton's +reception. In 1678, twenty years after the publication of _Paradise +Lost_, Prior spoke of him (_Hind transversed_) as "a rough, unhewn +fellow, that a man must sweat to read him," And in 1842, Hallam had +doubts "if _Paradise Lost_, published eleven years since, would have +met with a greater demand" than it did at first. It has been much +disputed by historians of our literature what inference is to be drawn +from the numbers sold of _Paradise Lost_ at its first publication. +Between 1667 and 1678, a space of twenty years, three editions had +been printed, making together some 4500 copies. Was this a large or a +small circulation? Opinions are at variance on the point. Johnson and +Hallam thought it a large sale, as books went at that time. Campbell, +and the majority of our annalists of books, have considered it as +evidence of neglect. Comparison with what is known of other cases of +circulation leads to no more certain conclusion. On the one hand, the +public could not take more than three editions--say 3000 copies--of +the plays of Shakespeare in sixty years, from 1623 to 1684. If this +were a fair measure of possible circulation at the time, we should +have to pronounce Milton's sale a great success. On the other hand, +Cleveland's poems ran through sixteen or seventeen editions in about +thirty years. If this were the average output of a popular book, the +inference would be that _Paradise Lost_ was not such a book. + +Whatever conclusion may be the true one from the amount of the public +demand, we cannot be wrong in asserting that from the first, and now +as then, _Paradise Lost_ has been more admired than read. The poet's +wish and expectation that he should find "fit audience, though few," +has been fulfilled. Partly this has been due to his limitation, his +unsympathetic disposition, the deficiency of the human element in his +imagination, and his presentation of mythical instead of real beings. +But it is also in part a tribute to his excellence, and is to be +ascribed to the lofty strain which requires more effort to accompany, +than an average reader is able to make, a majestic demeanour which no +parodist has been able to degrade, and a wealth of allusion demanding +more literature than is possessed by any but the few whose life is +lived with the poets. An appreciation of Milton is the last reward of +consummated scholarship; and we may apply to him what Quintilian has +said of Cicero, "Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit." + +Causes other than the inherent faults of the poem long continued to +weigh down the reputation of _Paradise Lost_. In Great Britain the +sense for art, poetry, literature, is confined to a few, while our +political life has been diffused and vigorous. Hence all judgment, +even upon a poet, is biassed by considerations of party. Before 1688 +it was impossible that the poet, who had justified regicide, could +have any public beyond the suppressed and crouching Nonconformists. +The Revolution of 1688 removed this ban, and from that date forward +the Liberal party in England adopted Milton as the republican poet. +William Hogg, writing in 1690, says of _Paradise Lost_ that "the fame +of the poem is spread through the whole of England, but being written +in English, it is as yet unknown in foreign lands." This is obvious +exaggeration. Lauder, about 1748, gives the date exactly, when he +speaks of "that infinite tribute of veneration that has been paid to +him _these sixty years past_." One distinguished exception there was. +Dryden, royalist and Catholic though he was, was loyal to his art. +Nothing which Dryden ever wrote is so creditable to his taste, as his +being able to see, and daring to confess, in the day of disesteem, +that the regicide poet alone deserved the honour which his +cotemporaries were for rendering to himself. Dryden's saying; "This +man cuts us all out, and the ancients too," is not perfectly well +vouched, but it would hardly have been invented, if it had not been +known to express his sentiments. And Dryden's sense of Milton's +greatness grew with his taste. When, in the preface to his _State of +Innocence_ (1674), Dryden praised _Paradise Lost_, he "knew not half +the extent of its excellence," John Dennis says, "as more than twenty +years afterwards he confessed to me." Had he known it, he never could +have produced his vulgar parody, _The State of Innocence_, a piece +upon which he received the compliments of his cotemporaries, as +"having refined the ore of Milton." + +With the one exception of Dryden, a better critic than poet, Milton's +repute was the work of the Whigs. The first _édition de luxe_ of +_Paradise Lost_ (1688) was brought out by a subscription got up by the +"Whig leader, Lord Somers. In this edition Dryden's pinchbeck epigram +so often quoted, first appeared-- + + Three poets in three distant ages born, &c. + +It was the Whig essayist, Addison, whose papers in the _Spectator_ +(1712) did most to make the poem popularly known. In 1737, in +the height of the Whig ascendancy, the bust of Milton penetrated +Westminster Abbey, though, in the generation before, the Dean of that +day had refused to admit an inscription on the monument erected to +John Phillips, because the name of Milton occurred in it. + +The zeal of the Liberal party in the propagation of the cult of Milton +was of course encountered by an equal passion on the part of the Tory +opposition. They were exasperated by the lustre which was reflected +upon Revolution principles by the name of Milton. About the middle of +the eighteenth century, when Whig popularity was already beginning to +wane, a desperate attempt was made by a rising Tory pamphleteer to +crush the new Liberal idol. Dr. Johnson, the most vigorous writer +of the day, conspired with one William Lauder, a native of Scotland +seeking fortune in London, to stamp out Milton's credit by proving him +to be a wholesale plagiarist. Milton's imitations--he had gathered +pearls wherever they were to be found--were thus to be turned into an +indictment against him. One of the beauties of _Paradise Lost_ is, as +has been already said, the scholar's flavour of literary reminiscence +which hangs about its words and images. This Virgilian art, in which +Milton has surpassed his master, was represented by this pair of +literary bandits as theft, and held to prove at once moral obliquity +and intellectual feebleness. This line of criticism was well chosen; +It was, in fact, an appeal to the many from the few. Unluckily for the +plot, Lauder was not satisfied with the amount of resemblance shown +by real parallel passages. He ventured upon the bold step of forging +verses, closely resembling lines in _Paradise Lost_, and ascribing +these verses to older poets. He even forged verses which he quoted as +if from _Paradise Lost_, and showed them as Milton's plagiarisms +from preceding writers. Even these clumsy fictions might have passed +without detection at that uncritical period of our literature, +and under the shelter of the name of Samuel Johnson. But Lauder's +impudence grew with the success of his criticisms, which he brought +out as letters, through a series of years, in the _Gentleman's +Magazine_. There was a translation of _Paradise Lost_ into Latin +hexameters, which had been made in 1690 by William Hogg. Lander +inserted lines, taken from this translation, into passages taken from +Massenius, Staphorstius, Taubmannus, neo-Latin poets, whom Milton had, +or might have read, and presented these passages as thefts by Milton. + +Low as learning had sunk in England in 1750, Hogg's Latin _Paradisus +amissus_ was just the book, which tutors of colleges who could teach +Latin verses had often in their hands. Mr. Bowle, a tutor of Oriel +College, Oxford, immediately recognised an old acquaintance in one +or two of the interpolated lines. This put him upon the scent, he +submitted Lauder's passages to a closer investigation, and the whole +fraud was exposed. Johnson, who was not concerned in the cheat, and +was only guilty of indolence and party spirit, saved himself by +sacrificing his comrade. He afterwards took ample revenge for the +mortification of this exposure, in his _Lives of the Poets_, in which +he employed all his vigorous powers and consummate skill to write down +Milton. He undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow at the poet's reputation, +and succeeded in damaging it for at least two generations of readers. +He did for Milton what Aristophanes did for Socrates, effaced the real +man and replaced him by a distorted and degrading caricature. + +It was again a clergyman to whom Milton owed his vindication from +Lauder's onslaught. John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, +brought Bowle's materials before the public. But the high Anglican +section of English life has never thoroughly accepted Milton. R.S. +Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, himself a poet of real feeling, gave +expression, in rabid abuse of Milton, to the antipathy which more +judicious churchmen suppress. Even the calm and gentle author of +the _Christian Year_, wide heart ill-sorted with a narrow creed, +deliberately framed a theory of Poetic for the express purpose, as it +would seem, of excluding the author of _Paradise Lost_ from the first +class of poets. + +But a work such as Milton has constructed, at once intense and +elaborate, firmly knit and broadly laid, can afford to wait. Time +is all in its favour, and against its detractors. The Church never +forgives, and faction does not die out. But Milton has been, for two +centuries, getting beyond the reach of party feeling, whether of +friends or foes. In each national aggregate an instinct is always at +work, an instinct not equal to exact discrimination of lesser degrees +of merit, but surely finding out the chief forces which have found +expression in the native tongue. This instinct is not an active +faculty, and so exposed to the influences which warp the will, it is +a passive deposition from unconscious impression. Our appreciation of +our poet is not to be measured by our choosing him for our favourite +closet companion, or reading him often. As Voltaire wittily said of +Dante, "Sa reputation s'affirmera toujours, parce qu'on ne le lit +guère." We shall prefer to read the fashionable novelist of each +season as it passes, but we shall choose to be represented at the +international congress of world poets by Shakespeare and Milton; +Shakespeare first, and next MILTON. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Milton, by Mark Pattison + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON *** + +This file should be named 8770-8.txt or 8770-8.zip + +Produced by Charles Aldorondo, Tiffany Vergon, Marc D'Hooghe and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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