ACT II.

Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell and Co. edition by David Price, email

ccx074@pglaf.org

CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

* * * * *

LIVES

OF THE

ENGLISH POETS

Waller Milton Cowley

BY

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

[Picture: Decorative graphic]

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:

_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.

1891.

INTRODUCTION.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, born at Lichfield in the year 1709, on the 7th of

September Old Style, 18th New Style, was sixty-eight years old when he

agreed with the booksellers to write his “Lives of the English Poets.”

“I am engaged,” he said, “to write little Lives, and little Prefaces, to

a little edition of the English Poets.” His conscience was also a little

hurt by the fact that the bargain was made on Easter Eve. In 1777 his

memorandum, set down among prayers and meditations, was “29 March, Easter

Eve, I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the time was not long.”

The history of the book as told to Boswell by Edward Dilly, one of the

contracting booksellers, was this. An edition of Poets printed by the

Martins in Edinburgh, and sold by Bell in London, was regarded by the

London publishers as an interference with the honorary copyright which

booksellers then respected among themselves. They said also that it was

inaccurately printed and its type was small. A few booksellers agreed,

therefore, among themselves to call a meeting of proprietors of honorary

or actual copyright in the various Poets. In Poets who had died before

1660 they had no trade interest at all. About forty of the most

respectable booksellers in London accepted the invitation to this

meeting. They determined to proceed immediately with an elegant and

uniform edition of Poets in whose works they were interested, and they

deputed three of their number, William Strahan, Thomas Davies, and

Cadell, to wait on Johnson, asking him to write the series of prefatory

Lives, and name his own terms. Johnson agreed at once, and suggested as

his price two hundred guineas, when, as Malone says, the booksellers

would readily have given him a thousand. He then contemplated only

“little Lives.” His energetic pleasure in the work expanded his Preface

beyond the limits of the first design; but when it was observed to

Johnson that he was underpaid by the booksellers, his reply was, “No,

sir; it was not that they gave me too little, but that I gave them too

much.” He gave them, in fact, his masterpiece. His keen interest in

Literature as the soul of life, his sympathetic insight into human

nature, enabled him to put all that was best in himself into these

studies of the lives of men for whom he cared, and of the books that he

was glad to speak his mind about in his own shrewd independent way.

Boswell was somewhat disappointed at finding that the selection of the

Poets in this series would not be Johnson’s, but that he was to furnish a

Preface and Life to any Poet the booksellers pleased. “I asked him,”

writes Boswell, “if he would do this to any dunce’s works, if they should

ask him.” JOHNSON. “Yes, sir; and _say_ he was a dunce.”

The meeting of booksellers, happy in the support of Johnson’s

intellectual power, appointed also a committee to engage the best

engravers, and another committee to give directions about paper and

printing. They made out at once a list of the Poets they meant to give,

“many of which,” said Dilly, “are within the time of the Act of Queen

Anne, which Martin and Bell cannot give, as they have no property in

them. The proprietors are almost all the booksellers in London, of

consequence.”

In 1780 the booksellers published, in separate form, four volumes of

Johnson’s “Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the most Eminent of

the English Poets.” The completion followed in 1781. “Sometime in

March,” Johnson writes in that year, “I finished the Lives of the Poets.”

The series of books to which they actually served as prefaces extended to

sixty volumes. When his work was done, Johnson then being in his

seventy-second year, the booksellers added £100 to the price first asked.

Johnson’s own life was then near its close. He died on the 13th of

December, 1784, aged seventy-five.

Of the Lives in this collection, Johnson himself liked best his Life of

Cowley, for the thoroughness with which he had examined in it the style

of what he called the metaphysical Poets. In his Life of Milton, the

sense of Milton’s genius is not less evident than the difference in point

of view which made it difficult for Johnson to know Milton thoroughly.

They know each other now. For Johnson sought as steadily as Milton to do

all as “in his great Taskmaster’s eye.”

H. M.

WALLER.

EDMUND WALLER was born on the third of March, 1605, at Coleshill, in

Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Esquire, of Agmondesham, in

Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish

Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden, in

the same county, and sister to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion.

His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income

of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value

of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent to

ten thousand at the present time.

He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed

afterwards to King’s College, in Cambridge. He was sent to Parliament in

his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year, and frequented the court of

James the First, where he heard a very remarkable conversation, which the

writer of the Life prefixed to his Works, who seems to have been well

informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, has

delivered as indubitably certain:

“He found Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, Bishop of

Durham, standing behind his Majesty’s chair; and there happened something

extraordinary,” continues this writer, “in the conversation those

prelates had with the king, on which Mr. Waller did often reflect. His

Majesty asked the bishops, ‘My Lords, cannot I take my subject’s money,

when I want it, without all this formality of Parliament?’ The Bishop of

Durham readily answered, ‘God forbid, Sir, but you should: you are the

breath of our nostrils.’ Whereupon the king turned and said to the

Bishop of Winchester, ‘Well, my Lord, what say you?’ ‘Sir,’ replied the

bishop, ‘I have no skill to judge of Parliamentary cases. The king

answered, ‘No put-offs, my Lord; answer me presently.’ ‘Then, Sir,’ said

he, ‘I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale’s money; for

he offers it.’ Mr. Waller said the company was pleased with this answer,

and the wit of it seemed to affect the king; for a certain lord coming in

soon after, his Majesty cried out, ‘Oh, my lord, they say you lig with my

Lady.’ ‘No, Sir,’ says his lordship in confusion; ‘but I like her

company, because she has so much wit.’ ‘Why, then,’ says the king, ‘do

you not lig with my Lord of Winchester there?’”

Waller’s political and poetical life began nearly together. In his

eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first in his works, on

“The Prince’s Escape at St. Andero:” a piece which justifies the

observation made by one of his editors, that he attained, by a felicity

like instinct, a style which perhaps will never be obsolete; and that

“were we to judge only by the wording, we could not know what was wrote

at twenty, and what at’ fourscore.” His versification was, in his first

essay, such as it appears in his last performance. By the perusal of

Fairfax’s translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates, he confessed

himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety

of observation, he had already formed such a system of metrical harmony

as he never afterwards much needed, or much endeavoured, to improve.

Denham corrected his numbers by experience, and gained ground gradually

upon the ruggedness of his age; but what was acquired by Denham was

inherited by Waller.

The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is supposed by

Mr. Fenton to be the “Address to the Queen,” which he considers as

congratulating her arrival, in Waller’s twentieth year. He is apparently

mistaken; for the mention of the nation’s obligations to her frequent

pregnancy proves that it was written when she had brought many children.

We have therefore no date of any other poetical production before that

which the murder of the Duke of Buckingham occasioned; the steadiness

with which the king received the news in the chapel deserved indeed to be

rescued from oblivion.

Neither of these pieces that seem to carry their own dates could have

been the sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the prince’s escape,

the prediction of his marriage with the Princess of France must have been

written after the event; in the other, the promises of the king’s

kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could not be properly

praised till it had appeared by its effects, show that time was taken for

revision and improvement. It is not known that they were published till

they appeared long afterwards with other poems.

Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their minds

at the expense of their fortunes. Rich as he was by inheritance, he took

care early to grow richer, by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress in the

city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for Mr.

Crofts. Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who

was afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in

childbed, and left him a widower of about five-and-twenty, gay and

wealthy, to please himself with another marriage.

Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself

resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half-fondly and half-ambitiously,

upon the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester,

whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; the

name is derived from the Latin appellation of “sugar,” and implies, if it

means anything, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, such as

excites rather tenderness and esteem, and such as, though always treated

with kindness, is never honoured or admired.

Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty

charms, and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather

than fondness, whose chains he wishes, though in vain, to break, and

whose presence is “wine” that “inflames to madness.”

His acquaintance with this high-born dame gave wit no opportunity of

boasting its influence; she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse,

but rejected his addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him away

to solace his disappointment with Amoret or Phillis. She married in 1639

the Earl of Sunderland, who died at Newbury in the king’s cause; and, in

her old age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him, when he would

again write such verses upon her; “When you are as young, Madam,” said

he, “and as handsome as you were then.”

In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, among the

rest of the men who were eminent in that age for genius and literature;

but known so little to his advantage, that they who read his character

will not much condemn Sacharissa, that she did not descend from her rank

to his embraces, nor think every excellence comprised in wit.

The lady was, indeed, inexorable; but his uncommon comprised in wit,

qualifications, though they had no power upon her, recommended him to the

scholars and statesmen; and undoubtedly many beauties of that time,

however they might receive his love, were proud of his praises. Who they

were, whom he dignifies with poetical names, cannot now be known.

Amoret, according to Mr. Fenton, was the Lady Sophia Murray. Perhaps by

traditions preserved in families more may be discovered.

From the verses written at Penshurst, it has been collected that he

diverted his disappointment by a voyage; and his biographers, from his

poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas;

but it seems much more likely that he should amuse himself with forming

an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to

America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability.

From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year, he wrote his pieces on

the Reduction of Sallee; on the Reparation of St. Paul’s; to the King on

his Navy; the Panegyric on the Queen Mother; the two poems to the Earl of

Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time cannot be

discovered.

When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa, he looked round him for an

easier conquest, and gained a lady of the family of Bresse, or Breaux.

The time of his marriage is not exactly known. It has not been

discovered that his wife was won by his poetry; nor is anything told of

her, but that she brought him many children. He doubtless praised some

whom he would have been afraid to marry, and perhaps married one whom he

would have been ashamed to praise. Many qualities contribute to domestic

happiness, upon which poetry has no colours to bestow; and many airs and

sallies may delight imagination, which he who flatters them never can

approve. There are charms made only for distant admiration. No

spectacle is nobler than a blaze.

Of this wife, his biographers have recorded that she gave him five sons

and eight daughters.

During the long interval of Parliament, he is represented as living among

those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and enjoying an

exuberant fortune with that independence and liberty of speech and

conduct which wealth ought always to produce. He was, however,

considered as the kinsman of Hampden, and was therefore supposed by the

courtiers not to favour them.

When the Parliament was called in 1640, it appeared that Waller’s

political character had not been mistaken. The king’s demand of a supply

produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection and discontent

regularly dictate; a speech filled with hyperbolical complaints of

imaginary grievances: “They,” says he, “who think themselves already

undone, can never apprehend themselves in danger; and they who have

nothing left can never give freely.” Political truth is equally in

danger from the praises of courtiers, and the exclamations of patriots.

He then proceeds to rail at the clergy, being sure at that time of a

favourable audience. His topic is such as will always serve its purpose;

an accusation of acting and preaching only for preferment: and he exhorts

the Commons “carefully” to “provide” for their “protection against Pulpit

Law.”

It always gratifies curiosity to trace a sentiment. Waller has in his

speech quoted Hooker in one passage; and in another has copied him,

without quoting. “Religion,” says Waller, “ought to be the first thing

in our purpose and desires; but that which is first in dignity is not

always to precede in order of time; for well-being supposes a being; and

the first impediment which men naturally endeavour to remove, is the want

of those things without which they cannot subsist. God first assigned

unto Adam maintenance of life, and gave him a title to the rest of the

creatures before he appointed a law to observe.”

“God first assigned Adam,” says Hooker, “maintenance of life, and then

appointed him a law to observe. True it is, that the kingdom of God must

be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but inasmuch as a

righteous life presupposeth life, inasmuch as to live virtuously it is

impossible, except we live; therefore the first impediment which

naturally we endeavour to remove is penury, and want of things without

which we cannot live.”

The speech is vehement; but the great position, that grievances ought to

be redressed before supplies are granted, is agreeable enough to law and

reason: nor was Waller, if his biographer may be credited, such an enemy

to the king, as not to wish his distresses lightened; for he relates,

“that the king sent particularly to Waller, to second his demand of some

subsidies to pay off the army, and Sir Henry Vane objecting against first

voting a supply, because the king would not accept unless it came up to

his proportion, Mr. Waller spoke earnestly to Sir Thomas Jermyn,

comptroller of the household, to save his master from the effects of so

bold a falsity; ‘for,’ he said, ‘I am but a country gentleman, and cannot

pretend to know the king’s mind:’ but Sir Thomas durst not contradict the

secretary; and his son, the Earl of St. Albans, afterwards told Mr.

Waller, that his father’s cowardice ruined the king.”

In the Long Parliament, which, unhappily for the nation, met Nov. 3,

1640, Waller represented Agmondesham the third time; and was considered

by the discontented party as a man sufficiently trusty and acrimonious to

be employed in managing the prosecution of Judge Crawley, for his opinion

in favour of ship-money; and his speech shows that he did not disappoint

their expectations. He was probably the more ardent, as his uncle

Hampden had been particularly engaged in the dispute, and, by a sentence

which seems generally to be thought unconstitutional, particularly

injured.

He was not, however, a bigot to his party, nor adopted all their

opinions. When the great question, whether Episcopacy ought to be

abolished, was debated, he spoke against the innovation so coolly, so

reasonably, and so firmly, that it is not without great injury to his

name that his speech, which was as follows, has been hitherto omitted in

his works:

“There is no doubt but the sense of what this nation had suffered from

the present bishops hath produced these complaints; and the apprehensions

men have of suffering the like, in time to come, make so many desire the

taking away of Episcopacy: but I conceive it is possible that we may not,

now, take a right measure of the minds of the people by their petitions;

for, when they subscribed them, the bishops were armed with a dangerous

commission of making new canons, imposing new oaths, and the like; but

now we have disarmed them of that power. These petitioners lately did

look upon Episcopacy as a beast armed with horns and claws; but now that

we have cut and pared them (and may, if we see cause, yet reduce it into

narrower bounds), it may, perhaps, be more agreeable. Howsoever, if they

be still in passion, it becomes us soberly to consider the right use and

antiquity thereof; and not to comply further with a general desire, than

may stand with a general good.

“We have already showed that Episcopacy and the evils thereof are mingled

like water and oil; we have also, in part, severed them; but I believe

you will find, that our laws and the present government of the Church are

mingled like wine and water; so inseparable, that the abrogation of, at

least, a hundred of our laws is desired in these petitions. I have often

heard a noble answer of the Lords, commended in this House, to a

proposition of like nature, but of less consequence; they gave no other

reason of their refusal but this, ‘_Nolumus mutare Leges Angliæ_:’ it was

the bishops who so answered them; and it would become the dignity and

wisdom of this House to answer the people, now, with a ‘_Nolumus

mutare_.’

“I see some are moved with a number of hands against the bishops; which,

I confess, rather inclines me to their defence; for I look upon

Episcopacy as a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this

assault of the people, and, withal, this mystery once revealed, ‘that we

must deny them nothing when they ask it thus in troops,’ we may, in the

next place, have as hard a task to defend our property, as we have lately

had to recover it from the Prerogative. If, by multiplying hands and

petitions, they prevail for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the

next demand perhaps may be _Lex Agraria_, the like equality in things

temporal.

“The Roman story tells us, that when the people began to flock about the

Senate, and were more curious to direct and know what was done, than to

obey, that Commonwealth soon came to ruin; their _Legem regare_ grew

quickly to be a _Legem ferre_: and after, when their legions had found

that they could make a Dictator, they never suffered the Senate to have a

voice any more in such election.

“If these great innovations proceed, I shall expect a flat and level in

learning too, as well as in Church preferments: _Hones alit Artes_. And

though it be true, that grave and pious men do study for learning-sake,

and embrace virtue for itself; yet it is true, that youth, which is the

season when learning is gotten, is not without ambition; nor will ever

take pains to excel in anything, when there is not some hope of excelling

others in reward and dignity.

“There are two reasons chiefly alleged against our Church government.

“First, Scripture, which, as some men think, points out another form.

“Second, the abuses of the present superiors.

“For Scripture, I will not dispute it in this place; but I am confident

that, whenever an equal division of lands and goods shall be desired,

there will be as many places in Scripture found out, which seem to favour

that, as there are now alleged against the prelacy or preferment of the

Church. And, as for abuses, when you are now in the remonstrance told

what this and that poor man hath suffered by the bishops, you may be

presented with a thousand instances of poor men that have received hard

measure from their landlords; and of worldly goods abused, to the injury

of others, and disadvantage of the owners.

“And therefore, Mr. Speaker, my humble motion is that we may settle men’s

minds herein; and by a question, declare our resolution, ‘to reform,’

that is, ‘not to abolish, Episcopacy.’”

It cannot but be wished that he, who could speak in this manner, had been

able to act with spirit and uniformity.

When the Commons begun to set the royal authority at open defiance,

Waller is said to have withdrawn from the House, and to have returned

with the king’s permission; and, when the king set up his standard, he

sent him a thousand broad-pieces. He continued, however, to sit in the

rebellious conventicle; but “spoke,” says Clarendon, “with great

sharpness and freedom, which, now there was no danger of being out-voted,

was not restrained; and therefore used as an argument against those who

were gone upon pretence that they were not suffered to deliver their

opinion freely in the House, which could not be believed, when all men

knew what liberty Mr. Waller took, and spoke every day with impunity

against the sense and proceedings of the House.”

Waller, as he continued to sit, was one of the commissioners nominated by

the Parliament to treat with the king at Oxford; and when they were

presented, the king said to him, “Though you are the last, you are not

the lowest nor the least in my favour.” Whitelock, who, being another of

the commissioners, was witness of this kindness, imputes it to the king’s

knowledge of the plot, in which Waller appeared afterwards to have been

engaged against the Parliament. Fenton, with equal probability, believes

that his attempt to promote the royal cause arose from his sensibility of

the king’s tenderness. Whitelock says nothing of his behaviour at

Oxford: he was sent with several others to add pomp to the commission,

but was not one of those to whom the trust of treating was imparted.

The engagement, known by the name of Waller’s plot, was soon afterwards

discovered. Waller had a brother-in-law, Tomkyns, who was clerk of the

queen’s council, and at the same time had a very numerous acquaintance,

and great influence, in the city. Waller and he, conversing with great

confidence, told both their own secrets and those of their friends; and,

surveying the wide extent of their conversation, imagined that they found

in the majority of all ranks great disapprobation of the violence of the

Commons, and unwillingness to continue the war. They knew that many

favoured the king, whose fear concealed their loyalty; and many desired

peace, though they durst not oppose the clamour for war; and they

imagined that, if those who had these good intentions should be informed

of their own strength, and enabled by intelligence to act together, they

might overpower the fury of sedition, by refusing to comply with the

ordinance for the twentieth part, and the other taxes levied for the

support of the rebel army, and by uniting great numbers in a petition for

peace. They proceeded with great caution. Three only met in one place,

and no man was allowed to impart the plot to more than two others; so

that, if any should be suspected or seized, more than three could not be

endangered.

Lord Conway joined in the design, and, Clarendon imagines, incidentally

mingled, as he was a soldier, some martial hopes or projects, which

however were only mentioned, the main design being to bring the loyal

inhabitants to the knowledge of each other; for which purpose there was

to be appointed one in every district, to distinguish the friends of the

king, the adherents to the Parliament, and the neutrals. How far they

proceeded does not appear; the result of their inquiry, as Pym declared,

was, that within the walls, for one that was for the Royalists, there

were three against them; but that without the walls, for one that was

against them, there were five for them. Whether this was said from

knowledge or guess, was perhaps never inquired.

It is the opinion of Clarendon, that in Waller’s plan no violence or

sanguinary resistance was comprised; that he intended only to abate the

confidence of the rebels by public declarations, and to weaken their

powers by an opposition to new supplies. This, in calmer times, and more

than this, is done without fear; but such was the acrimony of the

Commons, that no method of obstructing them was safe.

About this time another design was formed by Sir Nicholas Crispe, a man

of loyalty, that deserves perpetual remembrance; when he was a merchant

in the city, he gave and procured the king, in his exigencies, a hundred

thousand pounds; and, when he was driven from the Exchange, raised a

regiment, and commanded it.

Sir Nicholas flattered himself with an opinion, that some provocation

would so much exasperate, or some opportunity so much encourage, the

king’s friends in the city, that they would break out in open resistance,

and would then want only a lawful standard, and an authorised commander;

and extorted from the king, whose judgment too frequently yielded to

importunity, a commission of array, directed to such as he thought proper

to nominate, which was sent to London by the Lady Aubigny. She knew not

what she carried, but was to deliver it on the communication of a certain

token which Sir Nicholas imparted.

This commission could be only intended to lie ready till the time should

require it. To have attempted to raise any forces would have been

certain destruction; it could be of use only when the forces should

appear. This was, however, an act preparatory to martial hostility.

Crispe would undoubtedly have put an end to the session of Parliament,

had his strength been equal to his zeal; and out of the design of Crispe,

which involved very little danger, and that of Waller, which was an act

purely civil, they compounded a horrid and dreadful plot.

The discovery of Waller’s design is variously related.

In “Clarendon’s History” it is told, that a servant of Tomkyns, lurking

behind the hangings when his master was in conference with Waller, heard

enough to qualify him for an informer, and carried his intelligence to

Pym.

A manuscript, quoted in the “Life of Waller,” relates, that “he was

betrayed by his sister Price, and her Presbyterian chaplain Mr. Goode,

who stole some of his papers; and if he had not strangely dreamed the

night before, that his sister had betrayed him, and thereupon burnt the

rest of his papers by the fire that was in his chimney, he had certainly

lost his life by it.” The question cannot be decided. It is not

unreasonable to believe that the men in power, receiving intelligence

from the sister, would employ the servant of Tomkyns to listen at the

conference, that they might avoid an act so offensive as that of

destroying the brother by the sister’s testimony.

The plot was published in the most terrific manner.

On the 31st of May (1643), at a solemn fast, when they were listening to

the sermon, a messenger entered the church, and communicated his errand

to Pym, who whispered it to others that were placed near him, and then

went with them out of the church, leaving the rest in solicitude and

amazement. They immediately sent guards to proper places, and that night

apprehended Tomkyns and Waller; having yet traced nothing but that

letters had been intercepted, from which it appears that the Parliament

and the city were soon to be delivered into the hands of the cavaliers.

They perhaps yet knew little themselves, beyond some general and

indistinct notices. “But Waller,” says Clarendon, “was so confounded

with fear, that he confessed whatever he had heard, said, thought, or

seen; all that he knew of himself, and all that he suspected of others,

without concealing any person of what degree or quality soever, or any

discourse which he had ever upon any occasion entertained with them; what

such and such ladies of great honour, to whom, upon the credit of his wit

and great reputation, he had been admitted, had spoken to him in their

chambers upon the proceedings in the Houses, and how they had encouraged

him to oppose them; what correspondence and intercourse they had with

some Ministers of State at Oxford, and how they had conveyed all

intelligence thither.” He accused the Earl of Portland and Lord Conway

as co-operating in the transaction; and testified that the Earl of

Northumberland had declared himself disposed in favour of any attempt

that might check the violence of the Parliament, and reconcile them to

the king.

He undoubtedly confessed much which they could never have discovered, and

perhaps somewhat which they would wish to have been suppressed; for it is

inconvenient in the conflict of factions, to have that disaffection known

which cannot safely be punished.

Tomkyns was seized on the same night with Waller, and appears likewise to

have partaken of his cowardice; for he gave notice of Crispe’s commission

of array, of which Clarendon never knew how it was discovered. Tomkyns

had been sent with the token appointed, to demand it from Lady Aubigny,

and had buried it in his garden, where, by his direction, it was dug up;

and thus the rebels obtained, what Clarendon confesses them to have had,

the original copy.

It can raise no wonder that they formed one plot out of these two

designs, however remote from each other, when they saw the same agent

employed in both, and found the commission of array in the hands of him

who was employed in collecting the opinions and affections of the people.

Of the plot, thus combined, they took care to make the most. They sent

Pym among the citizens, to tell them of their imminent danger and happy

escape; and inform them, that the design was, “to seize the Lord Mayor

and all the Committee of Militia, and would not spare one of them.” They

drew up a vow and covenant, to be taken by every member of either House,

by which he declared his detestation of all conspiracies against the

Parliament, and his resolution to detect and oppose them. They then

appointed a day of thanksgiving for this wonderful delivery; which shut

out, says Clarendon, all doubts whether there had been such a

deliverance, and whether the plot was real or fictitious.

On June 11, the Earl of Portland and Lord Conway were committed, one to

the custody of the mayor, and the other of the sheriff; but their lands

and goods were not seized.

Waller was still to immerse himself deeper in ignominy. The Earl of

Portland and Lord Conway denied the charge; and there was no evidence

against them but the confession of Waller, of which undoubtedly many

would be inclined to question the veracity. With these doubts he was so

much terrified, that he endeavoured to persuade Portland to a declaration

like his own, by a letter extant in Fenton’s edition. “But for me,” says

he, “you had never known anything of this business, which was prepared

for another; and therefore I cannot imagine why you should hide it so far

as to contract your own ruin by concealing it, and persisting

unreasonably to hide that truth, which, without you, already is, and will

every day be made more manifest. Can you imagine yourself bound in

honour to keep that secret, which is already revealed by another? or

possible it should still be a secret, which is known to one of the other

sex?—If you persist to be cruel to yourself for their sakes who deserve

it not, it will nevertheless be made appear, ere long, I fear, to your

ruin. Surely, if I had the happiness to wait on you, I could move you to

compassionate both yourself and me, who, desperate as my case is, am

desirous to die with the honour of being known to have declared the

truth. You have no reason to contend to hide what is already

revealed—inconsiderately to throw away yourself, for the interest of

others, to whom you are less obliged than you are aware of.”

This persuasion seems to have had little effect. Portland sent (June 29)

a letter to the Lords, to tell them that he “is in custody, as he

conceives, without any charge; and that, by what Mr. Waller hath

threatened him with since he was imprisoned, he doth apprehend a very

cruel, long, and ruinous restraint:—He therefore prays, that he may not

find the effects of Mr. Waller’s threats, a long and close imprisonment;

but may be speedily brought to a legal trial, and then he is confident

the vanity and falsehood of those informations which have been given

against him will appear.”

In consequence of this letter, the Lords ordered Portland and Waller to

be confronted; when the one repeated his charge, and the other his

denial. The examination of the plot being continued (July 1), Thinn,

usher of the House of Lords, deposed, that Mr. Waller having had a

conference with the Lord Portland in an upper room, Lord Portland said,

when he came down, “Do me the favour to tell my Lord Northumberland, that

Mr. Waller has extremely pressed me to save my own life and his, by

throwing the blame upon the Lord Conway and the Earl of Northumberland.”

Waller, in his letter to Portland, tells him of the reasons which he

could urge with resistless efficacy in a personal conference; but he

overrated his own oratory; his vehemence, whether of persuasion or

entreaty, was returned with contempt.

One of his arguments with Portland is, that the plot is already known to

a woman. This woman was doubtless Lady Aubigny, who, upon this occasion,

was committed to custody; but who, in reality, when she delivered the

commission, knew not what it was.

The Parliament then proceeded against the conspirators, and committed

their trial to a council of war. Tomkyns and Chaloner were hanged near

their own doors. Tomkyns, when he came to die, said it was a “foolish

business;” and indeed there seems to have been no hope that it should

escape discovery; for, though never more than three met at a time, yet a

design so extensive must by necessity be communicated to many who could

not be expected to be all faithful and all prudent. Chaloner was

attended at his execution by Hugh Peters. His crime was, that he had

commission to raise money for the king; but it appears not that the money

was to be expended upon the advancement of either Crispe’s or Waller’s

plot.

The Earl of Northumberland, being too great for prosecution, was only

once examined before the Lords. The Earl of Portland and Lord Conway

persisting to deny the charge, and no testimony but Waller’s yet

appearing against them, were, after a long imprisonment, admitted to

bail. Hassel, the king’s messenger, who carried the letters to Oxford,

died the night before his trial. Hampden [Alexander] escaped death,

perhaps by the interest of his family; but was kept in prison to the end

of his life. They whose names were inserted in the commission of array

were not capitally punished, as it could not be proved that they had

consented to their own nomination; but they were considered as

malignants, and their estates were seized.

“Waller, though confessedly,” says Clarendon, “the most guilty, with

incredible dissimulation affected such a remorse of conscience, that his

trial was put off, out of Christian compassion, till he might recover his

understanding.” What use he made of this interval, with what liberality

and success he distributed flattery and money, and how, when he was

brought (July 4) before the House, he confessed and lamented, and

submitted and implored, may be read in the “History of the Rebellion” (B.

vii.). The speech, to which Clarendon ascribes the preservation of his

“dear-bought life,” is inserted in his works. The great historian,

however, seems to have been mistaken in relating that “he prevailed” in

the principal part of his supplication, “not to be tried by a council of

war;” for, according to Whitelock, he was by expulsion from the House

abandoned to the tribunal which he so much dreaded, and, being tried and

condemned, was reprieved by Essex; but after a year’s imprisonment, in

which time resentment grew less acrimonious, paying a fine of ten

thousand pounds, he was permitted to “recollect himself in another

country.”

Of his behaviour in this part of life, it is not necessary to direct the

reader’s opinion. “Let us not,” says his last ingenious biographer,

“condemn him with untempered severity, because he was not a prodigy which

the world hath seldom seen, because his character included not the poet,

the orator, and the hero.”

For the place of his exile he chose France, and stayed some time at Roan,

where his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite,

and his amanuensis. He then removed to Paris, where he lived with great

splendour and hospitality; and from time to time amused himself with

poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation,

in the natural language of an honest man.

At last it became necessary, for his support, to sell his wife’s jewels;

and being reduced, as he said, at last “to the rump-jewel,” he solicited

from Cromwell permission to return, and obtained it by the interest of

Colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married. Upon the remains of a

fortune, which the danger of his life had very much diminished, he lived

at Hallbarn, a house built by himself very near to Beaconsfield, where

his mother resided. His mother, though related to Cromwell and Hampden,

was zealous for the royal cause, and, when Cromwell visited her, used to

reproach him; he, in return, would throw a napkin at her, and say he

would not dispute with his aunt; but finding in time that she acted for

the king, as well as talked, he made her a prisoner to her own daughter,

in her own house. If he would do anything, he could not do less.

Cromwell, now Protector, received Waller, as his kinsman, to familiar

conversation. Waller, as he used to relate, found him sufficiently

versed in ancient history; and, when any of his enthusiastic friends came

to advise or consult him, could sometimes overhear him discoursing in the

cant of the times: but, when he returned, he would say, “Cousin Waller, I

must talk to these men in their own way;” and resumed the common style of

conversation.

He repaid the Protector for his favours (1654) by the famous Panegyric,

which has been always considered as the first of his poetical

productions. His choice of encomiastic topics is very judicious; for he

considers Cromwell in his exaltation, without inquiring how he attained

it; there is consequently no mention of the rebel or the regicide. All

the former part of his hero’s life is veiled with shades; and nothing is

brought to view but the chief, the governor, the defender of England’s

honour, and the enlarger of her dominion. The act of violence by which

he obtained the supreme power is lightly treated, and decently justified.

It was certainly to be desired that the detestable band should be

dissolved, which had destroyed the Church, murdered the king, and filled

the nation with tumult and oppression; yet Cromwell had not the right of

dissolving them, for all that he had before done could be justified only

by supposing them invested with lawful authority. But combinations of

wickedness would overwhelm the world by the advantage which licentious

principles afford, did not those, who have long practised perfidy, grow

faithless to each other.

In the poem on the War with Spain are some passages at least equal to the

best parts of the Panegyric; and, in the conclusion, the poet ventures

yet a higher flight of flattery, by recommending royalty to Cromwell and

the nation. Cromwell was very desirous, as appears from his

conversation, related by Whitelock, of adding the title to the power of

monarchy, and is supposed to have been withheld from it partly by fear of

the army, and partly by fear of the laws, which, when he should govern by

the name of king, would have restrained his authority. When, therefore,

a deputation was solemnly sent to invite him to the crown, he, after a

long conference, refused it, but is said to have fainted in his coach

when he parted from them.

The poem on the death of the Protector seems to have been dictated by

real veneration for his memory. Dryden and Sprat wrote on the same

occasion; but they were young men, struggling into notice, and hoping for

some favour from the ruling party. Waller had little to expect; he had

received nothing but his pardon from Cromwell, and was not likely to ask

anything from those who should succeed him.

Soon afterwards, the Restoration supplied him with another subject; and

he exerted his imagination, his elegance, and his melody, with equal

alacrity, for Charles the Second. It is not possible to read, without

some contempt and indignation, poems of the same author, ascribing the

highest degree of “power and piety” to Charles the First, then

transferring the same “power and piety” to Oliver Cromwell; now inviting

Oliver to take the Crown, and then congratulating Charles the Second on

his recovered right. Neither Cromwell nor Charles could value his

testimony as the effect of conviction, or receive his praises as

effusions of reverence; they could consider them but as the labour of

invention, and the tribute of dependence.

Poets, indeed, profess fiction; but the legitimate end of fiction is the

conveyance of truth, and he that has flattery ready for all whom the

vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt must be scorned as a

prostituted mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the

dignity of virtue.

The Congratulation was considered as inferior in poetical merit to the

Panegyric; and it is reported that, when the king told Waller of the

disparity, he answered, “Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in

truth.”

The Congratulation is indeed not inferior to the Panegyric, either by

decay of genius, or for want of diligence, but because Cromwell had done

much and Charles had done little. Cromwell wanted nothing to raise him

to heroic excellence but virtue, and virtue his poet thought himself at

liberty to supply. Charles had yet only the merit of struggling without

success, and suffering without despair. A life of escapes and indigence

could supply poetry with no splendid images.

In the first Parliament summoned by Charles the Second (March 8, 1661),

Waller sat for Hastings, in Sussex, and served for different places in

all the Parliaments of that reign. In a time when fancy and gaiety were

the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller

was forgotten. He passed his time in the company that was highest, both

in rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude

him. Though he drank water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to

heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr. Saville said, that

“no man in England should keep him company without drinking but Ned

Waller.”

The praise given him by St. Evremond is a proof of his reputation; for it

was only by his reputation that he could be known, as a writer, to a man

who, though he lived a great part of a long life upon an English pension,

never consented to understand the language of the nation that maintained

him.

In Parliament, “he was,” says Burnet, “the delight of the House, and

though old, said the liveliest things of any among them.” This, however,

is said in his account of the year seventy-five, when Waller was only

seventy. His name as a speaker occurs often in Grey’s Collections, but I

have found no extracts that can be more quoted as exhibiting sallies of

gaiety than cogency of argument.

He was of such consideration, that his remarks were circulated and

recorded. When the Duke of York’s influence was high, both in Scotland

and England, it drew, says Burnet, a lively reflection from Waller, the

celebrated wit. He said, “The House of Commons had resolved that the

duke should not reign after the king’s death: but the king, in opposition

to them, had resolved that he should reign even in his life.” If there

appear no extraordinary “liveliness” in this “remark,” yet its reception

proves its speaker to have been a “celebrated wit,” to have had a name

which men of wit were proud of mentioning.

He did not suffer his reputation to die gradually away, which may easily

happen in a long life, but renewed his claim to poetical distinction from

time to time, as occasions were offered, either by public events or

private incidents; and, contenting himself with the influence of his

Muse, or loving quiet better than influence, he never accepted any office

of magistracy.

He was not, however, without some attention to his fortune, for he asked

from the king (in 1665) the provostship of Eton College, and obtained it;

but Clarendon refused to put the seal to the grant, alleging that it

could be held only by a clergyman. It is known that Sir Henry Wotton

qualified himself for it by deacon’s orders.

To this opposition, the Biographia imputes the violence and acrimony with

which Waller joined Buckingham’s faction in the prosecution of Clarendon.

The motive was illiberal and dishonest, and showed that more than sixty

years had not been able to teach him morality. His accusation is such as

conscience can hardly be supposed to dictate without the help of malice.

“We were to be governed by Janizaries instead of Parliaments, and are in

danger from a worse plot than that of the fifth of November; then, if the

Lords and Commons had been destroyed, there had been a succession; but

here both had been destroyed for ever.” This is the language of a man

who is glad of an opportunity to rail, and ready to sacrifice truth to

interest at one time, and to anger at another.

A year after the chancellor’s banishment, another vacancy gave him

encouragement for another petition, which the king referred to the

Council, who, after hearing the question argued by lawyers for three

days, determined that the office could be held only by a clergyman,

according to the Act of Uniformity, since the provosts had always

received institution as for a parsonage from the Bishops of Lincoln. The

king then said he could not break the law which he had made; and Dr.

Zachary Cradock, famous for a single sermon, at most for two sermons, was

chosen by the Fellows.

That he asked anything else is not known; it is certain that he obtained

nothing, though he continued obsequious to the court through the rest of

Charles’s reign.

At the accession of King James (in 1685) he was chosen for Parliament,

being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of the

Downfall of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king on his

birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator Fenton, that in reading

Tasso he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of the Holy War,

and a zealous enmity to the Turks, which never left him. James, however,

having soon after begun what he thought a holy war at home, made haste to

put all molestation of the Turks out of his power.

James treated him with kindness and familiarity, of which instances are

given by the writer of his life. One day, taking him into the closet,

the king asked him how he liked one of the pictures: “My eyes,” said

Waller, “are dim, and I do not know it.” The king said it was the

Princess of Orange. “She is,” said Waller, “like the greatest woman in

the world.” The king asked who was that; and was answered, Queen

Elizabeth. “I wonder,” said the king, “you should think so; but I must

confess she had a wise council.” “And, Sir,” said Waller, “did you ever

know a fool choose a wise one?” Such is the story, which I once heard of

some other man. Pointed axioms, and acute replies, fly loose about the

world, and are assigned successively to those whom it may be the fashion

to celebrate.

When the king knew that he was about to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch,

a clergyman, he ordered a French gentleman to tell him that “the king

wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a falling church.”

“The king,” said Waller, “does me great honour in taking notice of my

domestic affairs; but I have lived long enough to observe that this

falling church has got a trick of rising again.”

He took notice to his friends of the king’s conduct; and said that “he

would be left like a whale upon the strand.” Whether he was privy to any

of the transactions that ended in the revolution is not known. His heir

joined the Prince of Orange.

Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer

life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have

turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and therefore

consecrated his poetry to devotion. It is pleasing to discover that his

piety was without weakness; that his intellectual powers continued

vigorous; and that the lines which he composed when “he, for age, could

neither read nor write,” are not inferior to the effusions of his youth.

Towards the decline of life he bought a small house, with a little land,

at Coleshill; and said “he should be glad to die, like the stag, where he

was roused.” This, however, did not happen. When he was at

Beaconsfield, he found his legs grow tumid: he went to Windsor, where Sir

Charles Scarborough then attended the king, and requested him, as both a

friend and physician, to tell him “what that swelling meant.” “Sir,”

answered Scarborough, “your blood will run no longer.” Waller repeated

some lines of Virgil, and went home to die.

As the disease increased upon him, he composed himself for his departure;

and calling upon Dr. Birch to give him the holy sacrament, he desired his

children to take it with him, and made an earnest declaration of his

faith in Christianity. It now appeared what part of his conversation

with the great could be remembered with delight. He related, that being

present when the Duke of Buckingham talked profanely before King Charles,

he said to him, “My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace and

have, I believe, heard more arguments for atheism than ever your grace

did; but I have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them; and

so, I hope, your grace will.”

He died October 21, 1687, and was buried at Beaconsfield, with a monument

erected by his son’s executors, for which Rymer wrote the inscription,

and which I hope is now rescued from dilapidation.

He left several children by his second wife, of whom his daughter was

married to Dr. Birch. Benjamin, the eldest son, was disinherited, and

sent to New Jersey as wanting common understanding. Edmund, the second

son, inherited the estate, and represented Agmondesham in parliament, but

at last turned quaker. William, the third son, was a merchant in London.

Stephen, the fourth, was an eminent doctor of laws, and one of the

commissioners for the union. There is said to have been a fifth, of whom

no account has descended.

The character of Waller, both moral and intellectual, has been drawn by

Clarendon, to whom he was familiarly known, with nicety, which certainly

none to whom he was not known can presume to emulate. It is therefore

inserted here, with such remarks as others have supplied; after which,

nothing remains but a critical examination of his poetry.

“Edmund Waller,” says Clarendon, “was born to a very fair estate, by the

parsimony, or frugality, of a wise father and mother; and he thought it

so commendable an advantage, that he resolved to improve it with his

utmost care, upon which in his nature he was too much intent; and in

order to that, he was so much reserved and retired, that he was scarcely

ever heard of, till by his address and dexterity he had gotten a very

rich wife in the city, against all the recommendation and countenance and

authority of the court, which was thoroughly engaged on the behalf of Mr.

Crofts, and which used to be successful, in that age, against any

opposition. He had the good fortune to have an alliance and friendship

with Dr. Morley, who had assisted and instructed him in the reading many

good books, to which his natural parts and promptitude inclined him,

especially the poets; and at the age when other men used to give over

writing verses (for he was near thirty years when he first engaged

himself in that exercise, at least that he was known to do so), he

surprised the town with two or three pieces of that kind; as if a tenth

Muse had been newly born to cherish drooping poetry. The doctor at that

time brought him into that company which was most celebrated for good

conversation, where he was received and esteemed with great applause and

respect. He was a very pleasant discourser in earnest and in jest, and

therefore very grateful to all kind of company, where he was not the less

esteemed for being very rich.

“He had been even nursed in parliaments, where he sat when he was very

young; and so, when they were resumed again (after a long intermission)

he appeared in those assemblies with great advantage; having a graceful

way of speaking, and by thinking much on several arguments (which his

temper and complexion, that had much of melancholic, inclined him to), he

seemed often to speak upon the sudden, when the occasion had only

administered the opportunity of saying what he had thoroughly considered,

which gave a great lustre to all he said; which yet was rather of delight

than weight. There needs no more be said to extol the excellence and

power of his wit, and pleasantness of his conversation, than that it was

of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults; that is, so to

cover them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproach, viz., a

narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness and want of

courage to support him in any virtuous undertaking; an insinuation and

servile flattery to the height, the vainest and most imperious nature

could be contented with; that it preserved and won his life from those

who most resolved to take it, and in an occasion in which he ought to

have been ambitious to have lost it; and then preserved him again from

the reproach and the contempt that was due to him for so preserving it,

and for vindicating it at such a price that it had power to reconcile him

to those whom he had most offended and provoked; and continued to his age

with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable where his spirit

was odious; and he was at least pitied where he was most detested.”

Such is the account of Clarendon; on which it may not be improper to make

some remarks.

“He was very little known till he had obtained a rich wife in the city.”

He obtained a rich wife about the age of three-and-twenty; an age, before

which few men are conspicuous much to their advantage. He was now,

however, in parliament and at court; and, if he spent part of his time in

privacy, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he endeavoured the

improvement of his mind as well as his fortune.

That Clarendon might misjudge the motive of his retirement is the more

probable, because he has evidently mistaken the commencement of his

poetry, which he supposes him not to have attempted before thirty. As

his first pieces were perhaps not printed, the succession of his

compositions was not known; and Clarendon, who cannot be imagined to have

been very studious of poetry, did not rectify his first opinion by

consulting Waller’s book.

Clarendon observes, that he was introduced to the wits of the age by Dr.

Morley; but the writer of his life relates that he was already among

them, when, hearing a noise in the street, and inquiring the cause, they

found a son of Ben Jonson under an arrest. This was Morley, whom Waller

set free at the expense of one hundred pounds, took him into the country

as director of his studies, and then procured him admission into the

company of the friends of literature. Of this fact Clarendon had a

nearer knowledge than the biographer, and is therefore more to be

credited.

The account of Waller’s parliamentary eloquence is seconded by Burnet,

who, though he calls him “the delight of the House,” adds, that “he was

only concerned to say that which should make him be applauded, he never

laid the business of the House to heart, being a vain and empty, though a

witty man.”

Of his insinuation and flattery it is not unreasonable to believe that

the truth is told. Ascham, in his elegant description of those whom in

modern language we term wits, says, that they are “open flatterers, and

private mockers.” Waller showed a little of both, when, upon sight of

the Duchess of Newcastle’s verses on the Death of a Stag, he declared

that he would give all his own compositions to have written them, and

being charged with the exorbitance of his adulation, answered, that

“nothing was too much to be given, that a lady might be saved from the

disgrace of such a vile performance.” This, however, was no very

mischievous or very unusual deviation from truth; had his hypocrisy been

confined to such transactions, he might have been forgiven, though not

praised: for who forbears to flatter an author or a lady?

Of the laxity of his political principles, and the weakness of his

resolution, he experienced the natural effect, by losing the esteem of

every party. From Cromwell he had only his recall; and from Charles the

Second, who delighted in his company, he obtained only the pardon of his

relation Hampden, and the safety of Hampden’s son.

As far as conjecture can be made from the whole of his writing, and his

conduct, he was habitually and deliberately a friend to monarchy. His

deviation towards democracy proceeded from his connexion with Hampden,

for whose sake he prosecuted Crawley with great bitterness; and the

invective which he pronounced on that occasion was so popular, that

twenty thousand copies are said by his biographer to have been sold in

one day.

It is confessed that his faults still left him many friends, at least

many companions. His convivial power of pleasing is universally

acknowledged; but those who conversed with him intimately, found him not

only passionate, especially in his old age, but resentful; so that the

interposition of friends was sometimes necessary.

His wit and his poetry naturally connected him with the polite writers of

his time: he was joined with Lord Buckhurst in the translation of

Corneille’s Pompey; and is said to have added his help to that of Cowley

in the original draft of the Rehearsal.

The care of his fortune, which Clarendon imputes to him in a degree

little less than criminal, was either not constant or not successful; for

having inherited a patrimony of three thousand five hundred pounds a year

in the time of James the First, and augmented at least by one wealthy

marriage, he left, about the time of the Revolution, an income of not

more than twelve or thirteen hundred; which, when the different value of

money is reckoned, will be found perhaps not more than a fourth part of

what he once possessed.

Of this diminution, part was the consequence of the gifts which he was

forced to scatter, and the fine which he was condemned to pay at the

detection of his plot; and if his estate, as is related in his life, was

sequestered, he had probably contracted debts when he lived in exile; for

we are told, that at Paris he lived in splendour, and was the only

Englishman, except the Lord St. Albans, that kept a table.

His unlucky plot compelled him to sell a thousand a year; of the waste of

the rest there is no account, except that he is confessed by his

biographer to have been a bad economist. He seems to have deviated from

the common practice; to have been a hoarder in his first years, and a

squanderer in his last.

Of his course of studies, or choice of books, nothing is known more than

that he professed himself unable to read Chapman’s translation of Homer

without rapture. His opinion concerning the duty of a poet is contained

in his declaration, that “he would blot from his works any line that did

not contain some motive to virtue.”

The characters by which Waller intended to distinguish his writing are

sprightliness and dignity; in his smallest pieces, he endeavours to be

gay; in the larger to be great. Of his airy and light productions, the

chief source is gallantry, that attentive reverence of female excellence

which has descended to us from the Gothic ages. As his poems are

commonly occasional, and his addresses personal, he was not so liberally

supplied with grand as with soft images; for beauty is more easily found

than magnanimity.

The delicacy, which he cultivated, restrains him to a certain nicety and

caution, even when he writes upon the slightest matter. He has,

therefore, in his whole volume, nothing burlesque, and seldom anything

ludicrous or familiar. He seems always to do his best; though his

subjects are often unworthy of his care.

It is not easy to think without some contempt on an author, who is

growing illustrious in his own opinion by verses, at one time, “To a

Lady, who can do anything but sleep, when she pleases;” at another, “To a

Lady who can sleep when she pleases;” now, “To a Lady, on her passing

through a crowd of people;” then, “On a braid of divers colours woven by

four Ladies;” “On a tree cut in paper;” or, “To a Lady, from whom he

received the copy of verses on the paper-tree, which, for many years, had

been missing.”

Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of

Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus: and a writer naturally pleases himself

with a performance, which owes nothing to the subject. But compositions

merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted in

time for something useful; they are flowers fragrant and fair, but of

short duration; or they are blossoms to be valued only as they foretell

fruits.

Among Waller’s little poems are some, which their excellency ought to

secure from oblivion; as, To Amoret, comparing the different modes of

regard with which he looks on her and Sacharissa; and the verses on Love,

that begin, “Anger in hasty words or blows.”

In others he is not equally successful; sometimes his thoughts are

deficient, and sometimes his expression.

The numbers are not always musical; as,

Fair Venus, in thy soft arms

The god of rage confine:

For thy whispers are the charms

Which only can divert his fierce design.

What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;

Thou the flame

Kindled in his breast canst tame

With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.

He seldom indeed fetches an amorous sentiment from the depths of science;

his thoughts are for the most part easily understood, and his images such

as the superfices of nature readily supplies; he has a just claim to

popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge; and is free

at least from philosophical pedantry, unless perhaps the end of a song to

the Sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a Copernican. To which

may be added the simile of the “palm” in the verses “on her passing

through a crowd;” and a line in a more serious poem on the Restoration,

about vipers and treacle, which can only be understood by those who

happen to know the composition of the Theriaca.

His thoughts are sometimes hyperbolical and his images unnatural

The plants admire,

No less than those of old did Orpheus’ lyre;

If she sit down, with tops all tow’rds her bow’d,

They round about her into arbours crowd;

Or if she walks, in even ranks they stand,

Like some well-marshall’d and obsequious band.

In another place:

While in the park I sing, the listening deer

Attend my passion, and forget to fear:

When to the beeches I report my flame,

They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.

To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers

With loud complaints they answer me in showers.

To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,

More deaf than trees, and prouder than the Heaven!

On the head of a stag:

O fertile head! which every year

Could such a crop of wonder bear!

The teeming earth did never bring,

So soon, so hard, so large a thing:

Which might it never have been cast,

Each year’s growth added to the last,

These lofty branches had supplied

The earth’s bold sons’ prodigious pride:

Heaven with these engines had been scaled,

When mountains heap’d on mountains fail’d.

Sometimes having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble

conclusion. In the song of “Sacharissa’s and Amoret’s Friendship,” the

two last stanzas ought to have been omitted.

His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate.

Then shall my love this doubt displace

And gain such trust that I may come

And banquet sometimes on thy face,

But make my constant meals at home.

Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as in

the verses on the Lady Dancing:

The sun in figures such as these

Joys with the moon to play:

To the sweet strains they advance,

Which do result from their own spheres;

As this nymph’s dance

Moves with the numbers which she hears.

Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a distich, is expanded and

attenuated till it grows weak and almost evanescent.

Chloris! since first our calm of peace

Was frighted hence, this good we find,

Your favours with your fears increase,

And growing mischiefs make you kind.

So the fair tree, which still preserves

Her fruit, and state, while no wind blows,

In storms from that uprightness swerves;

And the glad earth about her strows

With treasure from her yielding boughs.

His images are not always distinct; as in the following passage, he

confounds _Love_ as a person with _Love_ as a passion:

Some other nymphs, with colours faint,

And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,

And a weak heart in time destroy;

She has a stamp, and prints the boy;

Can, with a single look, inflame

The coldest breast, the rudest tame.

His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that

in return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling, as that

upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines written in the

Duchess’s Tasso, which he is said by Fenton to have kept a summer under

correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his success was

not always in proportion to his labour.

Of these pretty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults deserve

much attention. The amorous verses have this to recommend them, that

they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not

always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a

smile. There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles. Little

things are made too important: and the Empire of Beauty is represented as

exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the multiplicity of

human passions, and the variety of human wants. Such books, therefore,

may be considered as showing the world under a false appearance, and, so

far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading

expectation, and misguiding practice.

Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is

panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by his

imitator, Lord Lansdowne:

No satyr stalks within the hallow’d ground,

But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;

Glory and arms and love are all the sound.

In the first poem, on the danger of the prince on the coast of Spain,

there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the beginning; and

the last paragraph, on the cable, is in part ridiculously mean, and in

part ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is such as may be justly

praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language

at that time.

The two next poems are upon the king’s behaviour at the death of

Buckingham, and upon his Navy.

He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:

’Twas want of such a precedent as this

Made the old heathens frame their gods amiss.

In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble which suppose the

king’s power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were

almost criminal to remark the mistake of “centre” for “surface,” or to

say that the empire of the sea would be worth little if it were not that

the waters terminate in land.

The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is

feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul’s has something vulgar and

obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and harsh:

as,

So all our minds with his conspire to grace

The Gentiles’ great apostle and deface

Those state obscuring sheds, that like a chain

Seem’d to confine, and fetter him again:

Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,

As once the viper from his sacred hand.

So joys the aged oak, when we divide

The creeping ivy from his injured side.

Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean.

His praise of the Queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that he

“saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping the

limb,” presents nothing to the mind but disgust and horror.

Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether it

is intended to raise terror or merriment. The beginning is too splendid

for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness. The

versification is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and the

images artfully amplified; but as it ends neither in joy nor sorrow, it

will scarcely be read a second time.

The panegyric upon Cromwell has obtained from the public a very liberal

dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have been unjustly

lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the

English language. Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and

all are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse; or a trifling

thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.

The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and

striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts are

variegated with better passages and worse. There is something too

farfetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on by

saluting St. Lucar with cannon, “to lambs awakening the lion by

bleating.” The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, who were burnt in their

ship, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the

Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expressed their affection

and their end by a conceit at once false and vulgar:

Alive, in equal flames of love they burn’d,

And now together are to ashes turn’d.

The verses to Charles, on his return, were doubtless intended to

counterbalance the panegyric on Cromwell. If it has been thought

inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its

deficience has been already remarked.

The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They must be

supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the rest. The

Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they were the work of

Waller’s declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the fame

and the folly of the time past with the sentiments which his great

predecessor Petrarch bequeathed to posterity, upon his review of that

love and poetry which have given him immortality.

That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much

excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the

mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced to

confess superior, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves. By

delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead;

and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the

exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places at his

fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a small portion.

Intellectual decay is doubtless not uncommon; but it seems not to be

universal. Newton was in his eighty-fifth year improving his chronology,

a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my opinion, to

have lost at eighty-two any part of his poetical power.

His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but before

the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects, his success

would hardly have been better.

It has been the frequent lamentation of good men that verse has been too

little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been

made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have very seldom

attained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper to

inquire why they have miscarried.

Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many

authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines

of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he, who has

the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject

is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature,

the flowers of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes

of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the Maker for his

works, in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the

disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the

description is not God, but the works of God.

Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul,

cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator,

and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than

poetry can confer.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as by producing

something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are

few, and being few are universally known; but, few as they are, they can

be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and

very little from novelty of expression.

Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than

things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those

parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel,

the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and

addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.

From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always

obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy:

but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion.

Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of

the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be

amplified; Perfection cannot be improved.

The employments of pious meditation are Faith, Thanksgiving, Repentance,

and Supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy

with decorations. Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions,

yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined to a few modes,

and is to be felt rather then expressed. Repentance, trembling in the

presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets.

Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through many topics of

persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy.

Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple

expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power,

because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than

itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight

the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies

nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for

eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to

recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror

the sidereal hemisphere.

As much of Waller’s reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness

of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to

which a versifier must attend.

He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who

were living when his poetry commenced. The poets of Elizabeth had

attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or

forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might

have studied with advantage the poem of Davies, which, though merely

philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.

But he was rather smooth than strong; of “the full resounding line,”

which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples. The

critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of

sweetness to Waller.

His excellence of versification has some abatements. He uses the

expletive “do” very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost

universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last

compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and

finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.

His rhymes are sometimes weak words: “so” is found to make the rhyme

twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.

His double rhymes, in heroic verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips,

who was his rival in the translation of Corneille’s “Pompey;” and more

faults might be found were not the inquiry below attention.

He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as “waxeth,”

“affecteth;” and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite,

as “amazed,” “supposed,” of which I know not whether it is not to the

detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.

Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an

Alexandrine he has given no example.

The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He is never

pathetic, and very rarely sublime. He seems neither to have had a mind

much elevated by nature nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are such

as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily

supply. They had however then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which they

are now often supposed to want by those who, having already found them in

later books, do not know or inquire who produced them first. This

treatment is unjust. Let not the original author lose by his imitators.

Praise, however, should be due before it is given. The author of

Waller’s Life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythræus and

some late critics call “Alliteration,” of using in the same verse many

words beginning with the same letter. But this knack, whatever be its

value, was so frequent among early writers, that Gascoigne, a writer of

the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it;

Shakespeare, in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is supposed to ridicule

it; and in another play the sonnet of Holofernes fully displays it.

He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old

mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets;

the deities, which they introduced so frequently, were considered as

realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober

reason might even then determine. But of these images time has tarnished

the splendour. A fiction, not only detected but despised, can never

afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it may furnish a

transient allusion, or slight illustration. No modern monarch can be

much exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had his “club” he has his

“navy.”

But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will

remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance

of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and to him may be

applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and justice, of himself and

Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor Fido, he cried out, “If he had

not read Aminta, he had not excelled it.”

As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification from

Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of his work,

which, after Mr. Hoole’s translation, will perhaps not be soon reprinted.

By knowing the state in which Waller found our poetry, the reader may

judge how much he improved it.

1.

Erminia’s steed (this while) his mistresse bore

Through forrests thicke among the shadie treene,

Her feeble hand the bridle raines forelore,

Halfe in a swoune she was for fear I weene;

But her flit courser spared nere the more,

To beare her through the desart woods unseene

Of her strong foes, that chas’d her through the plaine

And still pursu’d, but still pursu’d in vaine.

2.

Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,

Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,

When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,

No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:

The Christian knights so full of shame and ire

Returned backe, with faint and wearie pace!

Yet still the fearfull Dame fled, swift as winde

Nor euer staid, nor euer lookt behinde.

3.

Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she driued,

Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,

Her plaints and teares with euery thought reuiued,

She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.

But when the sunne his burning chariot diued

In Thetis wane, and wearie teame vntide,

On Iordans sandie banks her course she staid,

At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid

4.

Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,

This was her diet that vnhappie night;

But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)

To ease the greefes of discontented wight,

Spred forth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,

In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;

And loue, his mother, and the graces kept

Strong watch and warde, while this faire Ladie slept

5.

The birds awakte her with their morning song,

Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,

The murmuring brookes and whistling windes among

The rattling boughes, and leaues, their parts did beare;

Her eies vnclos’d beheld the groues along

Of swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare;

And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,

Prouokt again the virgin to lament.

6.

Her plaints were interrupted with a sound,

That seem’d from thickest bushes to proceed,

Some iolly shepherd sung a lustie round,

And to his voice had tun’d his oaten reed;

Thither she went, an old man there she found,

(At whose right hand his little flock did feed)

Sat making baskets, his three sonnes among

That learn’d their father’s art, and learn’d his song.

7.

Beholding one in shining armes appeare

The seelie man and his were sore dismaid;

But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,

Her ventall vp, her visage open laid

You happie folke, of heau’n beloued deare,

Work on (quoth she) upon your harmless traid,

These dreadfull armes I beare no warfare bring

To your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes yon sing.

8.

But father, since this land, these townes and towres,

Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,

How may it be unhurt, that you and yours

In safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?

My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of ours

Is euer safe from storm of warlike broile;

This wilderneese doth vs in safetie keepe,

No thundering drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.

9.

Haply iust heau’ns defence and shield of right,

Doth loue the innocence of simple swains,

The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,

And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines;

So kings have cause to feare _Bellonaes_ might,

Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,

Nor ever greedie soldier was entised

By pouertie, neglected and despised.

10.

O Pouertie, chefe of the heau’nly brood,

Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!

No wish for honour, thirst of others good,

Can moue my hart, contented with mine owne:

We quench our thirst with water of this flood,

Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne;

These little flocks of sheepe and tender goates

Giue milke for food, and wool to make us coates.

11.

We little wish, we need but little wealth,

From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;

These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealth

Their fathers flocks, nor servants moe I need:

Amid these groues I walks oft for my health,

And to the fishes, birds, and beastes give heed,

How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,

And their contentment for ensample take.

12.

Time was (for each one hath his doting time,

These siluer locks were golden tresses than)

That countrie life I hated as a crime,

And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,

To Memphis’ stately pallace would I clime,

And there became the mightie Caliphes man

And though I but a simple gardner weare,

Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.

13.

Entised on with hope of future gaine,

I suffred long what did my soule displease;

But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,

I felt my native strength at last decrease;

I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,

And wisht I had enjoy’d the countries peace;

I bod the court farewell, and with content

My later age here have I quiet spent.

14.

While thus he spake, Erminia husht and still

His wise discourses heard, with great attention,

His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,

Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;

After much thought reformed was her will,

Within those woods to dwell was her intention,

Till fortune should occasion new afford,

To turne her home to her desired Lord.

15.

She said therefore, O shepherd fortunate!

That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue.

Yet liuest now in this contented state,

Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,

To entertaine me as a willing mate

In shepherds life, which I admire and loue;

Within these plessant groues perchance my hart,

Of her discomforts, may vnload some part.

16.

If gold or wealth of most esteemed deare,

If iewels rich, thou diddest hold in prise,

Such store thereof, such plentie haue I seen,

As to a greedie minde might well suffice:

With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,

Two christall streames fell from her watrie eies;

Part of her sad misfortunes then she told,

And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.

17.

With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deare

Towards his cottage gently home to guide;

His aged wife there made her homely cheare,

Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.

The Princesse dond a poor pastoraes geare,

A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;

But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)

Were such, as ill beseem’d a shepherdesse.

18.

Not those rude garments could obscure, and hide

The heau’nly beautie of her angels face,

Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,

Or ought disparag’de, by those labours bace;

Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,

And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,

Both cheese and butter could she make, and frame

Her selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.

MILTON.

THE life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with

such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented

myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton’s elegant

abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the

uniformity of this edition.

John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of

Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in

the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his

descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose.

His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous

Papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion of

his ancestors.

His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his

support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his

skill in music, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his

reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and retired to

an estate. He had probably more than common literature, as his son

addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He married a

gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two

sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law and adhered,

as the law taught him, to the king’s party, for which he was a while

persecuted; but having by his brother’s interest obtained permission to

live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by chamber-practice,

that, soon after the accession of King James, he was knighted and made a

judge; but, his constitution being too weak for business, he retired

before any disreputable compliances became necessary.

He had likewise a daughter Anne, whom he married with a considerable

fortune to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the

Crown-office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward,

who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only

authentic account of his domestic manners.

John the poet, was born in his father’s house, at the Spread Eagle, in

Bread Street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His

father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he

was instructed at first by private tuition under the care of Thomas

Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh,

and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered

him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.

He was then sent to St. Paul’s school, under the care of Mr. Gill; and

removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ’s College, in

Cambridge, where he entered a sizar, Feb. 12, 1624.

He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he

himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of

which the learned Politian has given him an example, seems to commend the

earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity.

But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and

particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is

difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first

essays, who never rose to works like “Paradise Lost.”

At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or

versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the public

eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would in any numerous

school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.

Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year,

by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very

nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius,

remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who,

after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance.

If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the

pride of Elizabeth’s reign, however they may have succeeded in prose, no

sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced anything

worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster’s

“Roxana.”

Of these exercises, which the rules of the University required, some were

published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly

applauded; for they were such as few can form: yet there is reason to

suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That

he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he

was treated was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear

is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either University

that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction.

It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him, that

he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true;

but it seems plain, from his own verses to “Diodati”, that he had

incurred “rustication,” a temporary dismission into the country, with

perhaps the loss of a term.

Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ,

Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.

Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum

Nec dudum _vetiti_ me _laris_ angit amor.—

Nec duri libet usque minas preferre magistri,

Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.

Si sit hoc exilium patrias adiisse penates,

Et vacuum curis otia greta sequi,

Non ego vel _profugi_ nomen sortemve recuso,

Lætus et _exilii_ conditione fruor.

I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can

give to the term, “vetiti laris,” “a habitation from which he is

excluded;” or how “exile” can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet

more, that he is weary of enduring “the threats of a rigorous master, and

something else which a temper like his cannot undergo.” What was more

than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his

“exile,” proves likewise that it was not perpetual; for it concludes with

a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be

conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the

memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.

He took both the usual degrees: that of bachelor in 1628, and that of

master in 1632; but he left the University with no kindness for its

institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his

governors, or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be

known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education,

inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being

intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in

literature, from their entrance upon grammar, till they proceed, as it is

called Masters of Art. And in his discourse “on the likeliest Way to

remove Hirelings out of the Church,” he ingeniously proposes that the

profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses should

be applied to such academies all over the land where languages and arts

may be taught together that youth may be at once brought up to a

competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such of them

as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves (without tithes) by

the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers.

One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted,

is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act

plays, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and

dishonest gestures of Trincalos, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the

shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes

of courtiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles.

This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile

from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which

the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were therefore only

criminal when they were acted by academics.

He went to the university with a design of entering into the church, but

in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a

clergyman, must “subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless

he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure

himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the

office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”

These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the

Articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical

obedience. I know not any of the Articles which seem to thwart his

opinions: but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil,

raise his indignation.

His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to

a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his

friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems

to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastic luxury of

various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in

which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from the

delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more

fitness for his task; and that he goes on, “not taking thought of being

late, so it gives advantage to be more fit.”

When he left the University, he returned to his father, then residing at

Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years, in which time

he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what

limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?

It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing

else; but Milton found time to write the “Masque of Comus,” which was

presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales,

in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater’s

sons and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer’s “Circe;” but we

never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:

—a quo ceu fonte perenni

Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.

His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the death

of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, Secretary for Ireland in the time

of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a favourite at

Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory.

Milton’s acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a

mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan

poetry, and his malignity to the church by some lines which are

interpreted as threatening its extermination.

He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for while he

lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days,

which he spent at Harefield, the house of the Countess Dowager of Derby,

where the Arcades made part of a dramatic entertainment.

He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking

chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother set him at

liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father’s consent, and Sir

Henry Wotton’s directions; with the celebrated precept of prudence, _i

pensieri stretti_, _ed il viso sciolto_; “thoughts close, and looks

loose.”

In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour of

Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then residing

at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden. From Paris

he hasted into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence studied

the language and literature; and, though he seems to have intended a very

quick perambulation of the country, stayed two months at Florence; where

he found his way into the academies, and produced his compositions with

such applause as appears to have exalted him in his own opinion, and

confirmed him in the hope, that, “by labour and intense study, which,”

says he, “I take to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong

propensity of nature,” he might “leave something so written to

after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.”

It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant of

great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not

without some contempt of others, for scarcely any man ever wrote so much,

and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its

value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against

the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.

At Florence he could not indeed complain that his merit wanted

distinction. Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastic inscription,

in the tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the

first stanza is only empty noise; the rest are perhaps too diffuse on

common topics: but the last is natural and beautiful.

From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was

again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius,

the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three years at Oxford,

introduced him to Cardinal Barberini: and he, at a musical entertainment,

waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly.

Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a tetrastich:

neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers by this

literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli,

though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance

indisputably in Milton’s favour.

Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to

publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected but

to have known that they were said _non tam de se_, _quam supra se_.

At Rome, as at Florence, he stayed only two months: a time indeed

sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its

antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too

short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.

From Rome he passed on to Naples, in company of a hermit, a companion

from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his

introduction to Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron

of Tasso. Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour

him with a sorry distich, in which he commends him for everything but his

religion: and Milton, in return, addressed him in a Latin poem, which

must have raised a high opinion of English elegance and literature.

His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but hearing of the

differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper to

hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements while his

countrymen were contending for their rights. He therefore came back to

Rome, though the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the

Jesuits, for the liberty of his conversations on religion. He had sense

enough to judge that there was no danger, and therefore kept on his way,

and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning controversy. He had

perhaps given some offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in the

Inquisition for philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by Manse,

that, by his declarations on religious questions, he had excluded himself

from some distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him. But such

conduct, though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe; and Milton

stayed two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence without

molestation.

From Florence he visited Lucca. He afterwards went to Venice; and,

having sent away a collection of music and other books, travelled to

Geneva, which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.

Here he reposed as in a congenial element, and became acquainted with

John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity.

From Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence of

a year and three months.

At his return he heard of the death of his friend, Charles Diodati; a man

whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was thought by

Milton worthy of a poem, entitled “Epitaphium Damonis,” written with the

common but childish imitation of pastoral life.

He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel a tailor in St. Bride’s

Churchyard, and undertook the education of John and Edward Philips, his

sister’s sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden

in Aldersgate Street, which was not then so much out of the world as it

is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a passage, that he

might avoid the noise of the street. Here he received more boys, to be

boarded and instructed.

Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of

merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens

home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when

he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private

boarding-school. This is the period of his life from which all his

biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton

should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but since it cannot be denied that

he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another

that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue;

and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act

which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was

alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by

an honest and useful employment.

It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a

formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read

in Aldersgate Street by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of

age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, that

nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman

must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man that has ever

undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been

able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant

inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd

misapprehension.

The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid

than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that

treat of physical subjects, such as the Georgic, and astronomical

treatises of the ancients. This was a scheme of improvement which seems

to have busied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who had

more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments

of life, formed the same plan of education in his imaginary college.

But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences

which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the

frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or

conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first

requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the

next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those

examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the

reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues and

excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists,

but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with

intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are

voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare

emergence, that one may know another half his life without being able to

estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and

prudential character immediately appears.

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most

axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials

for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators,

and historians.

Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical;

for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side. It was his

labour to turn philosophy from the study of Nature to speculations upon

life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from

life to nature. They seem to think that we are placed here to watch the

growth of plants, or the motions of the stars. Socrates was rather of

opinion that what we had to learn was how to do good and avoid evil.

Οτι ποι ὲν μεγάροισι κακόντ’ άγαθόντε τέτυκται

Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working

academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for

knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History of

Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps none of

my readers has ever heard.

That in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he laboured

with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part of his

method deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his

scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology, of which he

dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that were then

fashionable in the Dutch universities.

He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now and

then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with

some gay gentlemen of Gray’s Inn.

He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent his

breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641 he published a treatise

of Reformation in two books, against the Established Church, being

willing to help the Puritans, who were, he says, “inferior to the

Prelates in learning.”

Hall, Bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in defence

of Episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers, of whose names the

first letters made the celebrated word _Smectymnuus_, gave their answer.

Of this answer a confutation was attempted by the learned Usher; and to

the confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, “Of Prelatical

Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by

virtue of those Testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some

late Treatises, one whereof goes under the Name of James, Lord Bishop of

Armagh.”

I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of

Usher, that he had now adopted the Puritanical savageness of manners.

His next work was, “The Reason of Church Government urged against

Prelacy,” by Mr. John Milton, 1642. In this book he discovers, not with

ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of

his own powers, and promises to undertake something, he yet knows not

what, that may be of use and honour to his country. “This,” says he, “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 lips of whom He

pleases. To this must be added, industrious and select reading, steady

observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs

till which in some measure be compassed, I refuse not to sustain this

expectation.” From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and

rational, might be expected the “Paradise Lost.”

He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question.

To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was “vomited out of the

university,” he answers in general terms: “The fellows of the college

wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees,

as the manner is, signified many times how much better it would content

them that I should stay.—As for the common approbation or dislike of that

place, as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself the more

for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to obtain with me. Of

small practice were the physician who could not judge by what she and her

sister have of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly

keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is

queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but before it will be well with

her, she must vomit with strong physic. The university, in the time of

her better health, and my younger judgment, I never greatly admired, but

now much less.”

This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured.

He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and the train of his

thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives an

account of his own purity: “That if I be justly charged,” says he, “with

this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold shame.”

The style of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his

antagonist. This roughness he justifies by great examples, in a long

digression. Sometimes he tries to be humorous: “Lest I should take him

for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one

who serves not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will

bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half-a-dozen

phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of

convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped

narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of

thumb-ring posies.—And thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of

himself.” Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy

seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, “that hell

grows darker at his frown.”

His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his

house, and his school increased. At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth

year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace

in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town with him, and expected all the

advantages of a conjugal life. The lady, however, seems not much to have

delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Philips

relates, “having for a month led a philosophic life, after having been

used at home to a great house, and much company and joviality, her

friends, possibly by her own desire, made earnest suit to have her

company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, upon a

promise of her return at Michaelmas.”

Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies, and

now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in

one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no

inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband’s habitation,

and therefore very willingly forgot her promise. He sent her a letter,

but had no answer; he sent more with the same success. It could be

alleged that letters miscarry; he therefore despatched a messenger, being

by this time too angry to go himself. His messenger was sent back with

some contempt. The family of the lady were Cavaliers.

In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton’s, less

provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton soon

determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those who

could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published (in 1644)

“The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,” which was followed by the

“Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,” and the next year his

“Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the four chief Places of Scripture which

treat of Marriage.”

This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who,

then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the

author should be called before the Lords; “but that house,” says Wood,

“whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his accusers, did soon

dismiss him.”

There seems not to have been much written against him, nor anything by

any writer of eminence. The antagonist that appeared is styled by him,

“A Serving Man turned Solicitor.” Howel, in his Letters, mentions the

new doctrine with contempt; and it was, I suppose, thought more worthy of

derision than of confutation. He complains of this neglect in two

sonnets, of which the first is contemptible, and the second not

excellent.

From this time it is observed that he became an enemy to the

Presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party by

his humour is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest;

he loves himself rather than truth.

His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting

sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his

doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments,

the daughter of one Doctor Davis, who was, however, not ready to comply,

they resolved to endeavour a reunion. He went sometimes to the house of

one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and

at one of his usual visits was surprised to see his wife come from

another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees. He resisted her

entreaties for a while; “but partly,” says Philips, “his own generous

nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger

or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides,

soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a fair league of peace.” It

were injurious to omit that Milton afterwards received her father and her

brothers in his own house, when they were distressed, with other

Royalists.

He published about the same time his “Areopagitica, a speech of Mr. John

Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing.” The danger of such

unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem

in the science of government, which human understanding seems hitherto

unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority

shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of

truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his prospects, there

can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse

discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptic in theology may

teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these

evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every society

may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions which that

society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush

the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave

the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards

censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our

laws we can hang a thief.

But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic poetry was never

long out of his thoughts.

About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems

appeared, in which the “Allegro,” and “Penseroso,” with some others, were

first published.

He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars;

but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted

refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went

away; “and the house again,” says Philips, “now looked like a house of

the Muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly

his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the

occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster;

whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school, to teach

all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing to impart his

learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who

were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings nor his way of

teaching savoured in the least of pedantry.”

Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and

what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could

become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends

seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not

sell literature to all comers at an open shop; he was a chamber-milliner,

and measured his commodities only to his friends.

Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation,

tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character

again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: “He is much

mistaken,” he says, “if there was not about this time a design of making

him an adjutant-general in Sir William Waller’s army. But the

new-modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design.” An event

cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only

“designed, about some time,” if a man “be not much mistaken.” Milton

shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken,

somebody at some time designed him for a soldier.

About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645), he removed to a

smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln’s Inn

Fields. He is not known to have published anything afterwards till the

king’s death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the Presbyterians,

he wrote a treatise to justify it, “and to compose the minds of the

people.”

He made some remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the

Irish rebels. While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did only

what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch the

influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions,

first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; if objections, by

being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced conviction, he

yet shared—only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no less

sincere than his opponents. But, as faction seldom leaves a man honest,

however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having interpolated the

book called “Icon Basilike,” which the council of state, to whom he was

now made Latin Secretary, employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer

taken from Sidney’s “Arcadia,” and imputing it to the king, whom he

charges, in his “Iconoclastes,” with the use of this prayer, as with a

heavy come, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened

the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is venerable or great:

“Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing

deity—as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the

grave bishop that attended him, as a special relic of his saintly

exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen

woman praying to a heathen god?”

The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold the regicides

took away; so that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; and

Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined to

think them the forgers. The use of it by adaptation was innocent, and

they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of their

malice could contrive what they wanted to accuse.

King Charles the Second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed

Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of

his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was

reported, a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man of skill in

languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism,

almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive

praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he

probably had not much considered the principles of society or the right

of government, undertook the employment without distrust of his own

qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1649

published “Defensio Regis.”

To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he

performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable to

decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. In my

opinion, Milton’s periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he

delights himself with teasing his adversary as much as with confuting

him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he

considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmasius, which,

whoever entered, left half his virility behind him. Salmasius was a

Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a scold. _Tu es Gallus_, says

Milton, _et_, _ut aiunt_, _nimium gallinaceus_. But his supreme pleasure

is to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, with vicious Latin.

He opens his book with telling that he has used _Persona_, which,

according to Milton, signifies only a _Mask_, in a sense not known to the

Romans, by applying it as we apply _Person_. But as Nemesis is always on

the watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism

by an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when for one of those

supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and I think some one before him, has

remarked, “_propino te grammatistis tuis vapulandum_.” From _vapulo_,

which has a passive sense, _vapulandus_ can never be derived. No man

forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink

into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.

Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of sight;

but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was supplied by

zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book was much

read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily gains

attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his king,

could hardly want an audience.

That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity,

or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale

doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had

been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant of literature, that

almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a

new name, not yet considered as any one’s rival. If Christina, as is

said, commended the defence of the people, her purpose must be to torment

Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her civil station, nor her

natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by

birth a queen, and by temper despotic.

That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton’s book, treated with

neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man, so long accustomed to

admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently

offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which however he

was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of

attendants scarce less than regal.

He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published by

his son in the year of the Restoration. In the beginning, being probably

most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his use of the

word _persona_; but, if I remember right, he misses a better authority

than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his fourth satire:

—Quid agis cum dira et fœdior omni

Crimine _persona_ est?

As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel,

Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened

Salmasius’s life, and both perhaps with more malignity than reason.

Salmasius died at the Spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and, as controvertists are

commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered

with the credit of destroying him.

Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he

had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title of

Protector, but with kingly and more than kingly power. That his

authority was lawful, never was pretended; he himself founded his right

only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of public

employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy, but, continuing to

exercise his office under a manifest usurpation, betrayed to his power

that liberty which he had defended. Nothing can be more just than that

rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had justified the murder of

his king, for some acts which seemed to him unlawful, should now sell his

services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was evident that he

could do nothing lawful.

He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect was

such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin

secretary, or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be

diverted, and too strong to be subdued.

About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three

daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long

continue the appearance of lamenting her; but after a short time married

Catharine, the daughter of one Captain Woodcock, of Hackney, a woman

doubtless educated in opinions like his own. She died, within a year, of

childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband honoured

her memory with a poor sonnet.

The first reply to Milton’s “Defensio Populi” was published in 1651,

called “Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis

Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni) defensionem destructivam Regis et Populi.”

Of this the author was not known; but Milton and his nephew Philips,

under whose name he published an answer so much corrected by him, that it

might be called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, knowing him no

friend to regicides, thought themselves at liberty to treat him as if

they had known what they only suspected.

Next year appeared “Regii Sanguinis clamor ad Cœlum.” Of this the author

was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but

Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication,

was treated as the writer by Milton, in his “Defensio Secunda,” and

overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under

the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true

author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton’s pride operated

against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing that

Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of mistake.

In this second Defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely

satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness of

his flattery, _Deserimur_, _Cromuelle tu solus superes_, _ad te summa

nostrarum rerum_, _rediit_, _in te solo consistit_, _insuperabili tuæ

virtuti cedimus cuncti_, _nemine vel obloquente_, _nisi qui æquales

inæqualis ipse honores sibi quærit_, _aut digniori concessos invidet_,

_aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo

gratum_, _vel rationi consentaneum_, _esse in civitate nihil æquius_,

_nihil utilius_, _quam potiri rerum dignissimum_. _Eum te agnoscunt

omnes_, _Cromuelle_, _ea tu civis maximus_, _et gloriosissimus_, _dux

publici consilii_, _exercituum fortissimorum imperator_, _pater patriæ

gessisti_. _Sic tu spontanea bonorum omnium et animitus missa voce

salutaris_.

Cæsar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile

or more elegant flattery. A translation may show its servility; but its

elegance is less attainable. Having exposed the unskilfulness or

selfishness of the former government, “We were left,” says Milton, “to

ourselves: the whole national interest fell into our hands, and subsists

only in your abilities. To your virtue, overpowering and resistless,

every man gives way, except some who, without equal qualifications,

aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of merit greater than

their own, or who have yet to learn, that in the coalition of human

society nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason,

than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power. Such, sir,

are you by general confession; such are the things achieved by you, the

greatest and most glorious of our countrymen, the director of our public

councils, the leader of unconquered armies, the father of your country;

for by that title doss every good man hail you with sincere and voluntary

praise.”

Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to

defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he

declares in his title to be justly called the author of the “Regii

Sanguinis Clamor.” In this there is no want of vehemence nor eloquence,

nor does he forget his wonted wit. _Morus es_? _an Momus_? _an uterque

idem est_? He then remembers that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree,

and hints at the known transformation:

—Poma alba ferebat

Quæ post nigra tulit Morus.

With this piece ended his controversies; and he from this time gave

himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.

As secretary to the Protector he is supposed to have written the

Declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was

considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was

artfully suspended, the delay was publicly imputed to Mr. Milton’s

indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder

that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind.

Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from

external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes,

and to have resumed three great works which he had planned for his future

employment—an epic poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of

the Latin tongue.

To collect a dictionary seems a work of all others least practicable in a

state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute

inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun it, after

he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, he continued

it, says Philips, “almost to his dying day; but the papers were so

discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the press.”

The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed at Cambridge, had the use

of those collections in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards

is not known.

To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be

consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more skilful

and attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was probably the

difficulty of consulting and comparing that stopped Milton’s narrative at

the Conquest—a period at which affairs were not very intricate, nor

authors very numerous.

For the subject of his epic poem, after much deliberation, long choosing,

and beginning late, he fixed upon “Paradise Lost,” a design so

comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. He had once

designed to celebrate King Arthur, as he hints in his verses to Mansus;

but “Arthur was reserved,” says Fenton, “to another destiny.”

It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript, and

to be seen in a library at Cambridge, that he had digested his thoughts

on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were anciently called

Mysteries; and Philips had seen what he terms part of a tragedy,

beginning with the first ten lines of Satan’s address to the Sun. These

mysteries consist of allegorical persons, such as Justice, Mercy, Faith.

Of the tragedy or mystery of “Paradise Lost” there are two plans

_The Persons_. _The Persons_.

Michael. Moses.

Chorus of Angels. Divine Justice, Wisdom

Heavenly Love. Heavenly Love.

Lucifer. The Evening Star, Hesperus.

Adam, Eve, with the Serpent Chorus of Angels.

Conscience. Lucifer.

Death. Adam.

Labour, } Eve.

Sickness, } Conscience.

Discontent, } Mutes. Labour, }

Ignorance, } Sickness, }

with others; } Discontent, } Mutes

Faith. Ignorance, }

Hope. Fear, }

Charity. Death, }

Faith.

Hope.

Charity.

PARADISE LOST.

_The Persons_.

Moses, προλογίζει, recounting how he assumed his true body; that it

corrupts not, because it is with God in the mount; declares the like of

Enoch and Elijah; besides the purity of the place, that certain pure

winds, dews, and clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to

the sight of God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence,

by reason of their sin.

Justice, Mercy, Wisdom } debating what should become of man, if he fall.

Chorus of Angels singing a hymn of the Creation.

ACT II.

Heavenly Love.

Evening Star.

Chorus sing the marriage-song, and describe Paradise.