seen visions and foretold retribution upon the wrongdoers. Had he
lived in the days of Socrates, he would have made much of the voice of
God. Had he lived in the time of Bernard the Monk, or Francis of
Assisi, he would have dwelt apart from men and fed his soul in
solitude. Like John Bunyan, he was a melancholy, brooding, lonely
figure, who sometimes fought with Apollyon in the Valley of
Humiliation, and sometimes was lifted to the heights of the Delectable
Mountains. He was a man of singular sincerity, who confessed like
Paul: "Oft have I been in hell, and sometimes have I been caught up
into the seventh heaven and heard things not lawful to utter."
Blackness of darkness on one day, blinding radiance of light on
another--both experiences were his. "I think I am the poorest wretch
that lives, but I love God, or rather I am beloved of God." There
speaks the religious leader, and not the ambitious politician.
"In the whole history of Europe," writes Frederic Harrison, "Oliver
Cromwell is the one ruler into whose presence no vicious man could ever
come, into whose service no vicious man might ever enter." What an army
was that which he collected! When one of his officers was guilty of
profanity and vulgarity in his presence, he was immediately dismissed.
Cromwell sought out men like John Milton to be associated with him in
diplomatic work. "If I were to choose," he writes, "any servant--the
meanest officers of the army of the Commonwealth--I would choose a godly
man that hath principle, especially where a trust is to be committed,
because I know where to find a man that hath principle." He believed,
also, and practiced prayer, for more things are wrought by prayer than
are dreamed of in man's philosophy. With Tennyson, he held that "with
prayer men are bound as with chains of gold about the feet of God." One
day, overpressed with work, he went into the country to spend the night
with an old friend. After the Lord Protector had retired, the host heard
words, as of one speaking. Standing by the door of Cromwell's room, in
which he feared that some enemy might have found entrance, he heard
Cromwell pouring out his heart to God, telling Him that this was not a
work that he had taken up for himself; that it was God's work; that the
people were God's children, and the world God's world. Little wonder
that the modern politician cannot understand Oliver Cromwell, and finds
his life full of contradictory elements.
Not all present-day politicians could stand the prayer test. Cromwell
was a God-intoxicated man. He believed that the Sermon on the Mount
and the law of Sinai were the basis of all political creeds. "We
think," writes the historian, "that religion is a part of life; the
Puritan thought it was the whole of life." That which was morally
right could not be politically wrong, that which was politically right
could not be morally wrong. The principles of justice and honesty that
made the individual life worthy were one with the principles that made
national life worthy. Between man and man you expected truth. Was it
a matter of indifference for the King to lie to his ministers, his
people, and his Parliament? Is a king to be excused who broke all
pledges, and laid dishonest taxes on his people? These questions were
incidentally political questions, but primarily moral problems. And
they thrust Cromwell, the religious recluse, into the whirl and
turmoil of politics, and made him a soldier and a statesman.
What a study in contrasts is the story of this farmer of Huntingdon!
One day Parliament makes remonstrance; it sends the King word that he
must call Parliament at regular intervals; that taxes must be voted by
Parliament; that in the event of the King's refusing to call a
Parliament for the correction of injustice, the peers may issue the
call; that if the peers refuse, the judges may issue it, and if the
judges play false, the people may come together for election. Hampden,
Pym and Cromwell indict the King for wrong and tyranny. Charles gives
orders that the five leaders of Parliament shall be delivered to the
Keeper of the Tower. The King flees to Hampton Court, and sends the
gold plate and the crown jewels to Paris, hires foreign troops, lands
them upon English shores and England is plunged into civil war.
For the time being, Parliament is stunned, and the leaders seem
paralyzed. But one man is equal to the emergency. This farmer, in
rural England, assembles the gentlemen who live in his neighbourhood.
They crowd under the trees in his orchard, he reads a psalm, kneels
down and prays with them, then tells them that on the morrow a
representative of the King is to be in Cambridge to call for troops.
Cromwell announces that to-morrow he proposes to hang the King's
representative at the crossroads, and to seize the gold plate of the
university to hire troops. "I want no tapsters, or gamesters or
cowards, but only gentlemen who fear God and keep His commandments." A
few weeks later, Prince Rupert and Charles meet Lord Essex and the
Parliamentary forces at Marston Moor, and at first are overwhelmingly
successful. When the Puritans are defeated, Lord Essex orders Cromwell
to bring up his regiment, and the stroke of Cromwell's Ironsides is
the stroke of an earthquake. The farmer turns defeat into victory.
Then comes the overthrow of Charles at Naseby, and "God's crowning
mercy" at Worcester. When Scotland tries to force the Presbytery upon
England, Cromwell leads his troops north to Edinburgh. When the Irish
rise up at Drogheda, he marches into Ireland. When Charles breaks all
his pledges, and his private correspondence is discovered, exhibiting
him in the light of traitor to the liberties of England, Oliver
Cromwell becomes executioner, for he has to decide between the head of
the King, or the neck of the Parliament. Offered the throne, with the
right of descent passing over to his son, he refuses the crown, for he
wishes to be the protector, to guard the precious seeds of liberty
until such time as a worthy successor for the throne shall appear. If
for a time he rules as military dictator, it grows out of the
necessities of the times, for Parliament is weak, divided into hostile
camps, refusing to correct the laws, investigate the abuses of judges,
revise the principles of taxation, do anything for the navy, lighten
the burdens of the common people. Divided into little cliques,
Parliament wastes weeks and months, and at last Oliver Cromwell enters
the House of Commons and dissolves Parliament, charging them with
having thrown away a great opportunity. "May God choose between you
and me!" exclaims the one man who understands the emergency. He is the
true king who can do the thing that needs to be done!
What were the qualities that made Cromwell the great hero that he
was? Lord Morley tells us that Cromwell was first of all a practical
man, tactful, straightforward, and going straight to his object. With
the instincts of the true general, for soldiers he selected sturdy
farmers, country gentlemen, men of iron nerve, who did not drink nor
gamble, but with whom war meant business. He gave to each of his
soldiers a pocket-Bible, and when he hurled his regiments against the
jaunty and dapper youths who made up the army of Prince Rupert, his
troops swept through the royalist army "as a cannon ball goes through
a heap of egg-shells." "Pray, but keep your powder dry," was his
motto. He had also the genius of hard work, and the love of detail. He
could toil terribly. Nothing escaped his vigilance.
One day he was asked whether he knew that Charles II, then living in
Paris, had a representative in England? "Certainly," he replied. "He
has one representative who sleeps in such a house, and another who
sleeps near the palace. The correspondence of the first is in a trunk
under his bed. The letters of the second are in a certain inn."
When he came at length to live in a palace, Oliver Cromwell was simple
in his tastes, pure in his morals, tireless in his pursuit of duty.
It is said that he was a Philistine, and the enemy of culture. But he
loved music and encouraged the opera. He loved literature, and his
warmest friend was John Milton, the greatest poet and author of the
age. If he levelled the castles of England to the ground, that
feudalism might have no stronghold to which it could flee, it cannot
be said that he hated art, for Cromwell bought the cartoons of Raphael
for England, and preserved the art treasures of Charles the First. It
stirs our sense of wonder that men should think that Cromwell
represents opposition to culture, and that Charles the Second stands
for the refinements of life. Charles the Second, the royalist, was a
king who endeavoured to sell the cartoons of Raphael that Cromwell had
preserved, to the King of France, to obtain money for his court. He
encouraged bull-baiting and cock-fighting and pleasures steeped in
animalism and vulgarity. No one claims that Cromwell himself was a
piece of granite, unhewn and unpolished. The fact is, neither the
Puritan nor the royalist stood for full culture and refinement. But of
the two men, a thousand times preferable is the Cromwell who
maintained friendship with John Milton, who represented genius united
to the noblest character.
But great as was Cromwell, the ruler, he was greater still as father,
citizen and Christian. Alone, amid conspiracies and plots, the weary
Titan staggered on. At last the burden broke his heart. He held the
realm in order by his will, gave law to Europe, and defended the weak,
crushed the bigot, so that far away in Rome the Pope trembled at his
name, and the sons of the martyrs blessed him. Suddenly he realized
that his great work was done. On his death-bed he lay with one hand
upon the breast of Christ, and the other stretched out toward
Washington and Lincoln. For hours he lay, speaking great and noble
words. The storm that passed over London that day and uprooted the
trees in Hyde Park was the fitting dirge for the passing of this noble
soul. "God is good," he murmured. Urged to take a potion and find
sleep, he answered: "It is not my design to drink and sleep, but my
wish is to make what haste I can to be gone." An hour later he lay
calm and speechless. His work was done. He had shattered that citadel
of iniquity, the Divine Right of Kings, and secured for the people of
England the rights of conscience and religion. When the King returned,
he returned to reign in accordance with the people's will. When the
Church was restored, it was restored upon the basis of the Act of
Toleration, and the concession that no church can coerce the
conscience of the people. Cromwell had compacted Scotland and England.
He had outlined the movement of the reform bill of 1832. He had
brought in an epoch when, for the first and only time in Europe,
morality and religion were qualifications insisted upon in a court.
Much of that which is best in the life and thought of America and
England, the republic and the great monarchy alike owe to that stern
workman of God, Oliver Cromwell.
V
JOHN MILTON
(1608-1674)
_The Scholar in Politics_
By common consent, critics acclaim John Milton the greatest Latin
scholar, the foremost man of letters and one of the two first literary
artists England has produced. Historians have united to give him a
place among the ten great names in English history. Take out of our
institutions Milton's plea for the liberty of the printing press, his
views on education, and all modern society would be changed. Tennyson
called Milton "the God-gifted organ-voice of England, the
mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies; an angel skilled to sing of time
and of eternity; a seer who spent his days and nights listening to the
sevenfold _Hallelujah Chorus_ of Almighty God." Voltaire was not an
Englishman, but Voltaire characterized Milton's poems as "the noblest
product of the human imagination." Many American statesmen believe
that the principles of the Compact signed in the cabin of the
_Mayflower_ and the final Constitution, are none other than the
reproduction in political terms of the dreams of freedom that haunted
the soul of John Milton all his life long. But it remained for
Wordsworth to pay the supreme tribute to this immortal singer:
"Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice that sounded like the sea;
Pure as the native heavens, majestic, free.
We must be free or die that speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spoke; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held."
Poet, statesman, philosopher, champion and martyr of English
literature, John Milton was born at one of the critical moments in the
history of mankind. His era, says Macaulay, "was one of the memorable
eras--the very crisis of the great conflict between liberty and
despotism, reason and prejudice. The battle was fought for no single
generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were
staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then
were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked
their way into the depth of the American forests . . . and from one
end of Europe to the other have kindled an unquenchable fire in the
hearts of the oppressed. Of those principles, then struggling for
their existence, Milton was the most devoted and eloquent champion."
If it be true, as Macaulay would have us believe, that as civilization
advances, poetry necessarily declines, and that in an enlightened and
literary society the poet's difficulties are "in proportion to his
proficiency" as a scholar, then it may truly be said that few poets
have triumphed over greater difficulties than John Milton. He was born
at the end of the heroic age in English literature, and he enjoyed all
the benefits and advantages that travel and culture could bestow upon
him. If, however, as others of us believe, great literature is like a
spring of clear water, bubbling out of the soil, and no man can say
what mysterious elements give it its crystal purity, then it behooves
us to examine somewhat into the nature of Milton's parentage, the
character of his environment and the significance of the training he
received as a young man.
The great poet was born in London, eight years before the death of
Shakespeare. The first sixteen years of his life were the last sixteen
of the reign of James I. In Cheapside, within a block of his father's
house, stood the old "Mermaid" tavern of Marlow, Ben Jonson, Dekker
and Philip Massinger. His father was a scrivener, who drew deeds, made
wills, invested money for his clients, and, in general, fulfilled for
many families the tasks that now devolve upon the modern trust
company. The father's skill and probity won for him an increasing
number of clients, and with money came leisure for study and travel.
He was a musician, a man of culture, a composer of considerable note;
and he made his home an all-round center for young artists and
authors. From the beginning, he recognized the unique genius of his
son, and made the development of that genius to be the chief object of
his life. He never tired of telling the boy that his first duty was to
make the most possible out of himself. He held to those ideals that
were outlined in Plato's and Aristotle's books on education. Whatever
development could come through music, art, lectures, books, teachers,
travel, was given the young poet. Just as misers pursue the
accumulation of gold, just as ambitious statesmen pursue office and
honour, so this father, by day and by night, toiled upon the education
of his son; first teaching the child in his own library; then calling
to his aid wise and experienced tutors; then sending the boy to a
great London grammar school and thence to Cambridge University. The
boy showed promise from the first. His exercises, "in English or other
tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly the latter," early attracted
attention. He studied hard, at school and at home; often studying till
twelve at night. He loved books, "and he loved better to be foremost."
He was only fifteen years of age when he wrote:
"Let us blaze his name abroad,
For of gods, he is the God,
Who by wisdom did create
Th' painted heavens so full of state,
He the golden tressèd sun
Caused all day his course to run,
Th' hornèd moon to hang by night
'Mid her spangled sisters bright;
For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure."
Throughout his youth, Milton's enthusiasm for reading and learning
burned like a fire, by day and by night. He was one of the few students
outside of Italy who could think in Latin, debate in Latin, and write
verse in Latin quite as readily as in English. "He was a profound and
elegant classical scholar; he had studied all the mysteries of
Rabbinical literature; he was intimately acquainted with every language
of modern Europe from which either pleasure or information was then to
be derived." He fulfilled his own definition of education:--"I call a
complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly,
skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public,
of peace and war." And he believed that culture and character should
have an aggressive note. "I take it to be my portion in this life, by
labour and intense study, to leave something so written to after time,
that they should not willingly let it die." Faithfully did he seek to
live up to these high ideals. He sowed no wild oats, cut no bloody
gashes in his conscience and memory, dwelt apart from vice and
sensualism, and, at last, left the university with the approbation of
the good and with no stain upon his soul.
Upon entering Cambridge it had been his intention to become a clergyman,
but that intention he soon abandoned. The reasons he gives us are "the
tyranny that had invaded the church," and the fact that, finding he
could not honestly subscribe to the oaths and obligations required, he
"thought it better to preserve a blameless silence before the sacred
office of speaking, begun with servitude and forswearing." His father,
meantime, had retired from business, and taken a country house in a
small village near Windsor, about twenty miles from London. Few fathers
have ever been as generous in meeting and encouraging a son's desire to
devote himself to literature. For the next five years and eight months,
in that country quietude, within sight of the towers of Windsor, Milton
describes himself as "wholly intent, through a period of absolute
leisure, on a steady perusal of the Greek and Latin writers." His
father, of course, had provided the funds. His biographer Masson says:
"Not until Milton was thirty-two years of age, if even then, did he earn
a penny for himself." Such a life would have ruined ninety-nine out of
every hundred talented young men; but it is the genius of Milton that he
put those years to good use. Believing himself to be one dedicated to a
high purpose, he not only completed his studies in classical literature
but produced, at the same time, those early immortal classics known as
his "minor" poems. There he wrote the "Lycidas," one of the world's
great elegies; there the "Comus," which alone of all the masques of that
time and preceding time, "has gone in its entirety into the body of
living English literature." And there he wrote those two exquisite,
airy fancies known to every schoolboy under the titles of "L'Allegro,"
and "Il Penseroso."
It was in 1638, at the age of thirty, that Milton determined to
broaden his views by study in foreign lands. Once more his father
generously made possible the fulfillment of his ambition. The young
scholar naturally turned his steps toward Italy, then the home of
painting, letters and the newer learning. His biographer pictures him
for us--"a slight, patrician figure, distinguished alike in mind and
physique. . . . He carries letters from Sir Henry Wotton; he sees the
great Hugo Grotius at Paris; sees the sunny country of olives in
Provence; sees the superb front of Genoa piling up from the blue
waters of the Mediterranean; sees Galileo at Florence--the old
philosopher too blind to study the face of the studious young
Englishman that has come so far to greet him. He sees, too, what is
best and bravest at Rome; among the rest St. Peter's, just then
brought to completion, and in the first freshness of its great tufa
masonry. He is fêted by studious young Italians; has the freedom of
the Accademia della Crusca; blazes out in love-sonnets to some
dark-eyed signorina of Bologna; returns by Venice and by Geneva where
he hobnobs with the Diodati, friends of his old school-fellow,
Charles Diodati." In Rome again, we find him writing Latin poems, some
of which, seen by learned Italians, stir these writers to amazement at
the thought that a Briton could be so excellent a Latin poet. It was
their praise, Milton says in one of his letters, that led to his
renewed resolve to devote his life to literature. Then and there he
determined to do for England what Homer had done for Greece, what
Virgil had done for Rome, what Dante had done for Italy. Lingering in
the Sistine Chapel and in the various galleries of the Vatican, he saw
the religious dramas of Michael Angelo, and the paintings of Raphael,
with the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve, culminating in the
Last Judgment. And in those hours of leisure and contemplation he
stored his memory with the glorious images that he was to use in later
years for unfolding and unveiling the fall of man's soul in his
_Paradise Lost_ and _Paradise Regained_.
It was while he was in the midst of his studies in the libraries of
Rome and Florence, that the news reached him of the civil war
threatening at home. Charles the First had reaffirmed the doctrine of
the divine right of kings--that iniquitous theory which long afterward
was to be revived by Kaiser Wilhelm as an excuse for the Great War.
Over against Charles stood the Parliament, representing the people,
and led by John Eliot and John Pym, John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell.
Milton, with instant decision, turned his steps toward England. "I
thought it dishonourable," he tells us, "that I should be travelling
at ease for amusement when my fellow-countrymen at home were fighting
for liberty." Back in London, he found the country rocking on a red
wave--the Scotch marching over the border--the Long Parliament
portending--Strafford and Laud on the verge of impeachment--city
pitted against city; brother against brother. His own father, drawing
near to the end of his life, was a strong Royalist. The storm had
broken, and in that sea of trouble the King and the old leaders were
to go down. It is the glory of Milton that in that hour he chose to
ally himself with a great cause and abandoning, for the time, his
dream of an immortal epic, threw himself into the struggle for
intellectual and moral liberty.
For the next twenty years, he was engulfed in a maelstrom of politics,
tossed on a feverish tide of political hatred. With his own father and
brother on the side of the King, he could no longer live under their
roof; and unwilling to surrender his convictions of freedom and
self-government, he struck out for himself in London. He took
lodgings, and for years earned a slender livelihood by preparing
pupils for the university. He gave his mornings to his students, and
spent his evenings in writing pleas, attacking the autocracy of the
King, and supporting the Puritan Leaders who wished to found the new
commonwealth. It was not only Milton's life that was so affected. The
lives of almost all his English contemporaries suffered similarly.
Through the twenty years, from 1640 to 1660, there was an eclipse of
pure literature in England. When he wrote he wrote necessarily, in
prose. "I have the use," he explains, "as I may account it, of my
_left hand_." But never once did he lose sight of his ideal--poetry.
"Neither do I think it shame," he explains in one of his pamphlets,
"to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet I
may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now
indebted,"--meaning the composition of some poem which "the world
would not willingly let die." He kept his promise--in the fullness of
time. But in the interval, he played his part in the great drama of
the Civil War.