personal misfortune. Like Shakespeare and Goethe, and many other
poets, John Milton was most unfortunate in his marital life. At
thirty-five, after a month's rest in the country, he returned to
London, bringing with him a wife. She was young and of a family
virtually committed to the Royalist cause; she had a shallow mind, and
no sympathy either for Milton's artistic aims or his political
convictions. The Civil War was on, Milton was giving himself with
intense application to important public topics, was away from home in
consultation with public men the long day through, and often returned
late at night. The poor girl was in despair. A stranger in a great
city, with no gift for friendship, she slowly became conscious of the
fact that she never could be interested in John Milton's life. Urging
the necessity of a brief visit to her country home, she went away and
later positively refused to return. Milton was first hurt, then
angered and finally disillusioned; and after great mental distress and
careful study of the whole question of marriage and divorce, he
published his views, which have exerted a profound and lasting
influence upon society.
John Milton held that divorce should be as easy as marriage, and that
when two people, beginning their contract in good faith, discover
after honest endeavour, that there can be no happiness in the home,
and both decide that it is best and honourable to separate, then there
should be no legal obstacle to prevent this, providing always that
proper provision be made for the support and education of children,
whose character and disposition could not fail to be injured by the
daily spectacle of unhappiness. Years afterward, when his wife's
family had been rendered homeless, he took them all back into his own
house. When his wife died, he married again, and within a year he was
left a widower. Six years later he married his third wife, but his
home was embittered by endless warfare between his daughters and his
third wife. One of his letters says plainly that his wife was kind to
him in his blind, old age when his daughters were undutiful and inhuman.
The Civil War was scarcely begun before he issued the first of those
thunderbolts of indignation and exhortation known as his pamphlets on
church discipline, education, and the liberty of unlicensed printing.
The years that followed were years of incessant labour. He began and
completed during this period his _History of England_, written from
the viewpoint of the common people and tracing the ills, the poverty,
and rebellion of Britain to misgovernment and tyranny. When Parliament
tried the King upon charges of treason, and executed Charles, it was
John Milton who came forward to defend Parliament, in a treatise which
bore this title upon the title page:
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrate
Proving that it is Lawful
To call to account a tyrant or wicked King
And, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death.
By
JOHN MILTON.
Milton was not only the greatest pamphleteer of his generation--"head
and shoulders above the rest"--but there is no life of that time, not
even Cromwell's, in which the history of the revolution, so far as the
deep underlying ideas were concerned, may be better studied. He was
the first Englishman of note outside of Parliament to attach himself
thus openly to the new Commonwealth. And every one of his prose works
had this great quality, that it struck a blow for liberty.
In beginning any study of Milton it must be remembered that his
intellect was essentially athletic. If he was the great poet of his
era, he was not a dreamer of the closet, but a man who plunged into
the thick of the fight, and made his writing and his doing a vital and
indestructible part of his time. In analyzing the scholar's influence,
De Quincey speaks of "the literature of knowledge" and "the literature
of power." The function of the first is to teach men, the function of
the second is to move and persuade men to action. De Quincey wishes us
to understand that Milton's writings entered almost immediately into
the thinking and the doing of the British people, just as bread enters
into the blood of the physical system. Milton cared nothing for
learning for its own sake. Knowledge was important only to the degree
in which it was vitally creative, inspiring men, correcting their
blunders, rebuking their selfishness, enlightening their darkness, and
lifting them into the realm of silence, peace, and mystery. After
defining the true scholar and Christian, as a knight going forth to
war against every form of ignorance and tyranny, he exclaims, "I
cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and
unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks
out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not
without dust and heat." Learning, with Milton, was a means of
enlarging his being and doing. Mark Pattison has well said, "He
cultivated not letters, but himself, and sought to enter into
possession of his own mental kingdom. Not that he might reign there,
but that he might royally use its resources in building up a work
which should bring honour to his country and his native tongue."
The glory of the battle which he fought for freedom--the freedom of
the human mind--is all his own. "Thousands and tens of thousands among
his contemporaries raised their voices against ship-money and the Star
Chamber; but there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful
evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would
result from the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of
private judgment." Milton was determined that the people should think
for themselves, as well as tax themselves. And that he might shake the
very foundations of the corruptions which he saw debasing the state,
he selected for himself the most arduous and dangerous literary
service. "At the beginning he wrote with incomparable energy and
eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to
prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the
crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party." He
pressed always into the forlorn hope. The very men who most
disapproved of his opinions were forced to respect the hardihood with
which he maintained them.
Milton's prose pamphlets deserve the close study of every writer who
wishes to know the full power of the English language. They sparkle
with fine passages; they ring with eloquence; they have the fire and
the fervour of a great mind at white heat. For quotable sentences,
they are "a perfect field of cloth of gold." And the fineness and
stiffness of their texture is by no means their greatest splendour.
Every one of these controversial pamphlets answers to its author's
definition of a good book in that it contains "the precious life-blood
of a master spirit."
By far the most popular, and probably the most eloquent of all his
prose writings is the famous _Areopagitica_, his argument for the
liberty of unlicensed printing. It appeared on the 25th of November
1664, deliberately unlicensed and unregistered, and was a remonstrance
addressed to Parliament in the form and style of an oration to be
delivered in the assembly. Nobly eulogistic of Parliament in other
respects, it denounced their printing ordinance as utterly unworthy of
them, and of the new era of English liberties. Admired to-day because
its main doctrine has become axiomatic--at one blow it accomplished
the repeal of the licensing system and established forever the freedom
of the English press--it contains passages which for power and beauty
of prose make the finest declamations of Edmund Burke sink into
insignificance.
It was not, however, the _Areopagitica_, but his vindication of the
execution of Charles the First that procured for Milton the office of
Latin Secretary under Cromwell's government. His boundless admiration
for Cromwell had shown itself already in his immortal sonnet on the
great soldier. He considered Cromwell the greatest and the best man of
his generation, or of many generations; and he regarded Cromwell's
assumption of the supreme power, as well as his retention of that
power with a sovereign title, "as no real suppression of the republic,
but as necessary for the preservation of the republic." Cromwell, in
turn, saw in Milton a most powerful defender of the new commonwealth.
By 1651 it was generally conceded that "the reputation of the
Commonwealth abroad had been established by two agencies, and only
two:--the victories of Cromwell, and the prose pamphlets of John
Milton." In the nature of the case, their friendship and mutual
respect of the two men was inevitable.
After the death of Charles, new treaties had to be drawn between
England and Spain, England and France and Italy and Holland. These
state papers were all written in Latin, and the Secretary of Latin and
of Foreign Relations was a great person in the cabinet of every
country. Milton's knowledge of Spanish, French, Italian, German,
Dutch, as well as Latin and Greek, made him an important figure in the
deliberations of Cromwell's Council of State. His special duty was the
drafting in Latin of letters of state, but from the first, he was
employed in every conceivable kind of work. The council looked to him
for everything in the nature of literary vigilance in the interests of
the struggling Commonwealth. He was employed in personal conferences,
in the examination of suspected papers, in interviews with their
authors and printers, agents of foreign towns, envoys, ambassadors. It
was a period of intense and feverish activity, with cabinet meetings,
conferences between the leaders of the government, necessarily held at
night. In that era of candle-light and flickering torches, with oil
and electricity both still unknown, Milton, with despatches to be
translated, notes to be made at all hours, was soon imperilling his
eyesight. He was forty years of age when he took the post; at
forty-six, as a result of his continuous and indomitable activities,
he had ruined his eyes and was totally blind.
Wonderful the fortitude with which he faced this affliction! Hear the
lines he composed in the first of those dark days:
"When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
'Dost God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask: But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies--'God doth not heed
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve, who only stand and wait.'"
And hard upon this catastrophe came a new turn in the wheel of fortune.
Cromwell died; the Commonwealth came to an end; all London threw its
cap in the air at the Restoration. The leaders of the Commonwealth had
to flee for their lives. Some fled to America for safety and some were
caught and executed. Cromwell's body was taken from its grave in
Westminster Abbey, suspended from the gallows, and left to dangle there.
Past Milton's house, near Red Lion Square, the howling mob went by,
dragging the body of his old leader. Milton himself, blind and in
hiding, narrowly escaped execution. His head was forfeit, his pamphlets
burned by public order. Only chance, and the exertion of influential
friends, saved him from discovery and death. His escape from the
scaffold is a mystery now, as it was a mystery at the time.
In the evil days that followed--the days of the Restoration, with its
revenges and reactions, its return to high Episcopacy and suppression
of every form of dissent and sectarianism, its new and shameless royal
court--Milton, blind and forgotten by the public, turned to his
long-cherished dream of a great poem. For twenty years, through all
the storm and stress of political agitation, it had never been
banished wholly from his thoughts. In the library of Cambridge
University there may be seen to-day a list of over one hundred
possible subjects, written in his own hand during some leisure-hour
when he was pondering the great project of his heart. Living in
retirement, visited only by a few close friends, he now proceeded to
compose the masterpiece planned as a young man. Unable to see a book,
forced to beg every friend who visited him to read aloud to him,
dependent upon the assistance of three rebellious daughters, none of
whom understood the many languages he knew so well, he nevertheless
drove forward, determined to finish his task. _Paradise Lost_, begun
and brought to completion in the face of every sort of discouragement,
was finished in 1665 and published in 1667.
This amazing poem--the glory of English literature--is one of the few
monumental works of the world. The English language possesses no other
epic poem, nor a poem of any other kind, which approaches it in
sustained sublimity. Nothing in modern epic literature is comparable
to it save only the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante. It is impossible, in a
single page or chapter, to call the roll of the beauties of Milton's
poetic style. Much has been written of the organ-music of his verse,
its magical, mysterious influence. Speaking generally, the terms mean
little; but applied to Milton, both have significance. For his
melody, his verse-structure, the very names he employs act like an
incantation, with an almost occult power.
James Russell Lowell emphasizes this quality: "It is wonderful how,
from the most withered and juiceless hint gathered in his reading, his
grand images rise like an exhalation; how from the most battered old
lamp, caught in that huge drag-net with which he swept the waters of
learning, he could conjure up a tall genii to build his palaces." His
words, says Macaulay, in another brilliant summary, "are words of
enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present
and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into
existence, and all the burial places of the memory give up their dead.
Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonym for
another, and the whole effect is destroyed. There is large learning in
the poem--weighty and recondite; but this spoils no music; great
cumbrous names catch sonorous vibrations under his modulating touch,
and colossal shields and spheres clash together like symbols. The
whole burden of his knowledges--Pagan, Christian, or Hebraic, lift up
and sink away upon the undulations of his sublime verse, as
heavy-laden ships rise and fall upon some great ground swell making
in from outer seas."
Fully to comprehend the peculiar sublimity of _Paradise Lost_, one must
understand the peculiar character of the age in which Milton was living.
It was a theological era, as the next century was a political era. In
their reaction from the absolutism of Rome, the Puritans hated
everything that reminded them of the Roman excesses, and that revulsion
extended not only to the ecclesiastical autocracy of Rome, but to the
lesser things, the clouds of incense, stained glass and the rich dresses
of the clergy, the ecclesiastical holidays. These Puritans are called by
Macaulay the most remarkable body of men that the world has ever
produced. They had a contempt for all terrestrial distinctions.
Confident of the favour of God, they despised the dignities of this
world. "Unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets they were
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the
registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their
steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of
ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not
made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which shall never fade
away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests they looked
down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious
treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by right of an
earlier creation and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. Thus
the Puritan was made up of two different men--the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm,
inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his
Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his King."
It is only to be expected that the literature of such an age--both
prose and poetry--should be to a large degree theological. Milton's
_Paradise Lost_ is an epic of war between good and evil. Not that,
strictly speaking, Milton belonged to the class just described. He was
not a Puritan, any more than he was a Freethinker, or a Royalist. In
his character the noblest qualities of all three groups were combined.
"From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from
the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy circles of the Roundheads and the
Christmas revels of the Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to
itself whatever was great and good." But the peculiar religious note
that is in his great epic, the serious note, the note of dignity, is
the distillation of an atmosphere charged and aquiver with the most
intense theological convictions.
Numerous accounts have come down to us of Milton's personal appearance
and habits toward the end of his life. By nature a patrician,
reserved, clothed with a gentle dignity, he was not without a certain
haughty, defiant self-assertion such as Lowell ascribes to Dante and
Michael Angelo. He came to be a familiar figure in the neighbourhood
of his residence, "a slender figure, of middle stature or a little
less, generally dressed in a grey cloak or overcoat, and wearing
sometimes a small silver-hilted sword, evidently in feeble health, but
still looking younger than he was, with his lightish hair, and his
fair, rather than aged or pale, complexion."
He was a very early riser, and regular in the distribution of his day,
"spending the first part, to his midday dinner, always in his own
room, amid his books, with an amanuensis to read for him and write to
his dictation. Usually there was singing in the late afternoon, when
there was a voice to sing for him; and instrumental music, when his,
or a friendly hand touched the old organ." He loved the out-of-door
life, walked much in the fields, loved his garden and his flowers,
made his library to be the world of the open air.
From time to time learned and noble visitors, native and foreign, made
their way to his modest home. They read in the lines of his noble
countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory and his
affliction. They listened to his slightest words, they kneeled to kiss
his hand and weep upon it, for the neglect of an age that was unworthy
of his talents and his virtues. They contested with his daughters the
privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal
accents which flowed from his lips. But, for the most part, his last
days were days of retirement. The grand loneliness of his latter years
makes him the most impressive figure in our literary history. Yet it
is idle to talk of the loneliness of one, the habitual companions of
whose mind were the Past and Future. "I always seem to see him,
leaning in his blindness, one hand on the shoulder of each, sure that
the Future will guard the song which the Past had inspired."
Few characters have stood the test of time and history so well. And no
other man has so fully incarnated himself in literature. Therefore the
tribute of James Russell Lowell: "We say of Shakespeare that he had
the power of transforming himself into everything, but of Milton that
he had the power of transforming everything into himself." Dante is
individual, rather than self-conscious, and he, the cast-iron man,
grows pliable as a field of grain at the breath of Beatrice, and flows
away in waves of sunshine. But Milton never let himself go for a
moment. As other poets are possessed by their theme, so is he
self-possessed, his great theme being John Milton, and his great duty
that of interpreter between him and the world. Puritanism has left an
abiding mark in politics and religion, but its true monuments are the
prose of Bunyan and the verse of Milton. For the epitaph written by
his friend was scrupulously accurate: "Whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are of good report, Milton
thought upon these things."
VI
JOHN WESLEY
(1703-1791)
_And the Moral Awakening of the Common People_
Now that long time has passed, the two bright names of the eighteenth
century are seen to be the names of Washington and Wesley. The
statement will come with a note of shock to many readers, but beyond
most critical estimates, it is one that will stand examination. Time
has a way of reversing judgments, and not the least of the changes in
men's thought has been the gradual transformation in the attitude of
the historian toward Wesley, carried to his grave by six poor men in
1791. Now that one hundred and twenty years have passed, Wesley has
thirty millions of followers, who believe in his method and are
carrying forward his work. The time has come when there is not a city
in Great Britain, or on the North American continent, or in India--and
few indeed, of any size in China or Japan--where there are not some
disciples of this teacher, spreading his message, according to his
plan. During these hundred and twenty years, dynasties have fallen,
empires have perished, cities and states have changed, but the ideas
and the influence of Wesley, stamped upon the memories of his
followers, have spread like leaven, working often in silence and
secrecy, but slowly transforming the world.
The praise of his critics is enough to lend John Wesley enduring fame.
Leslie Stephen called him "the greatest captain of men of his century."
Macaulay ridiculed the historians of his day who failed to see that "the
greatest event of the era was the work of Wesley." To Macaulay's
statement that Wesley had a genius for government, equal to that of
Richelieu, Matthew Arnold added, "He had a genius for godliness." Buckle
called him the first of ecclesiastical statesmen, while Lecky said,
"Wesley's sermons were of greater historic importance to England than
all the victories by land and sea under Pitt."