exactly embodied in Milton. Men, indeed, are formed on no ideal type.
Human nature has tendencies too various, and circumstances too complex.
All men’s characters have sides and aspects not to be comprehended
in a single definition; but in this case, the extent to which the
character of the man, as we find it delineated, approaches to the moral
abstraction which we sketch from theory, is remarkable. The whole being
of Milton may, in some sort, be summed up in the great commandment
of the austere character, ‘Reverence thyself.’ We find it expressed
in almost every one of his singular descriptions of himself,—of those
striking passages which are scattered through all his works, and which
add to whatever interest may intrinsically belong to them one of the
rarest of artistic charms, that of magnanimous autobiography. They have
been quoted a thousand times, but one of them may perhaps be quoted
again. ‘I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning
bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places, where the opinion was it
might be soonest attained; and as the manner is, was not unstudied in
those authors which are most commended; whereof some were grave orators
and historians, whose matter methought I loved indeed, but as my age
then was, so I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac poets,
whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing sound of
their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, and most
agreeable to nature’s part in me, and for their matter, which what it is,
there be few who know not, I was so allured to read, that no recreation
came to me better welcome: for that it was then those years with me which
are excused, though they be least severe, I may be saved the labour to
remember ye. Whence having observed them to account it the chief glory
of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that
could esteem themselves worthiest to love those high perfections, which
under one or other name they took to celebrate, I thought with myself
by every instinct and presage of nature, which is not wont to be false,
that what emboldened them to this task, might with such diligence as
they used embolden me; and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my
share, would herein best appear, and best value itself, by how much more
wisely, and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be
absent) the object of not unlike praises: for albeit these thoughts to
some will seem virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to
a third sort perhaps idle; yet the mentioning of them now will end in
serious. Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in this
life have sometimes preferred: whereof not to be sensible when good and
fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and
withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these
persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that if
I found those authors any where speaking unworthy things of themselves,
or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect
it wrought with me, from that time forward their art I still applauded,
but the men I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two famous
renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour of them
to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts
without transgression. And long it was not after, when I was confirmed
in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write
well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that
is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not
presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless
he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is
praiseworthy.’
It may be fanciful to add, and we may be laughed at, but we believe
that the self-reverencing propensity was a little aided by his singular
personal beauty. All the describers of his youth concur in telling us
that this was very remarkable. Mr. Masson has the following account of
it:—
‘When Milton left Cambridge in July 1632, he was twenty-three
years and eight months old. In stature, therefore, at least,
he was already whatever he was to be. “In stature,” he says
himself at a latter period, when driven to speak on the
subject, “I confess I am not tall, but still of what is nearer
to middle height than to little: and what if I were of little;
of which stature have often been very great men both in peace
and war—though why should that be called little which is great
enough for virtue?” (“_Staturâ, fateor, non sum procerâ, sed
quæ mediocri tamen quàm parvæ propior sit; sed quid si parvâ,
quâ et summi sæpe tum pace tum bello viri fuere—quanquam
parva cur dicitur, quæ ad virtutem satis magna est?_”) This is
precise enough; but we have Aubrey’s words to the same effect:
“He was scarce so tall as I am,” says Aubrey; to which, to make
it more intelligible, he appends the marginal note:—“_Qu._
_Quot_ feet I am high? _Resp._ Of middle stature;”—i.e. Milton
was a little under middle height. “He had light brown hair,”
continues Aubrey,—putting the word “abrown” (“auburn”) in the
margin by way of synonym for “light brown;”—“his complexion
exceeding fair; oval face; his eye a dark gray.”’
We are far from accusing Milton of personal vanity. His character was too
enormous, if we may be allowed so to say, for a fault so petty. But a
little tinge of excessive self-respect will cling to those who can admire
themselves. Ugly men are and ought to be ashamed of their existence.
Milton was not so.
The peculiarities of the austere type of character stand out in Milton
more remarkably than in other men who partake of it, because of the
extreme strength of his nature. In reading him this is the first thing
that strikes us. We seem to have left the little world of ordinary
writers. The words of some authors are said to have ‘hands and feet;’
they seem, that is, to have a vigour and animation which only belong to
things which live and move. Milton’s words have not this animal life.
There is no rude energy about them. But, on the other hand, they have,
or seem to have, a soul, a spirit which other words have not. He was
early aware that what he wrote, ‘by certain vital signs it had,’ was
such as the world would not ‘willingly let die.’ After two centuries we
feel the same. There is a solemn and firm music in the lines; a brooding
sublimity haunts them; the spirit of the great writer moves over the
face of the page. In life there seems to have been the same peculiar
strength that his works suggest to us. His moral tenacity is amazing.
He took his own course, and he kept his own course; and we may trace in
his defects the same characteristics. ‘Energy and ill-temper,’ some say,
‘are the same thing;’ and though this is a strong exaggeration, yet there
is a basis of truth in it. People who labour much will be cross if they
do not obtain that for which they labour; those who desire vehemently
will be vexed if they do not obtain that which they desire. As is the
strength of the impelling tendency, so, other things being equal, is
the pain which it will experience if it be baffled. Those, too, who are
set on what is high will be proportionately offended by the intrusion
of what is low. Accordingly, Milton is described by those who knew him
as a ‘harsh and choleric man.’ ‘He had,’ we are told, ‘a gravity in his
temper, not melancholy, or not till the latter part of his life,—not
sour, not morose, not ill-natured; but a certain severity of mind,
not condescending to little things;’—and this, although his daughter
remembered that he was delightful company, the life of conversation,
and that he was so ‘on account of a flow of subjects and an unaffected
cheerfulness and civility.’ Doubtless this may have been so when he was
at ease, and at home. But there are unmistakable traces of the harsher
tendency in almost all his works.
Some of the peculiarities of the ascetic character were likewise
augmented by his studious disposition. This began very early in life,
and continued till the end. ‘My father,’ he says, ‘destined me to the
study of polite literature, which I embraced with such avidity, that
from the twelfth year of my age I hardly ever retired to rest from my
studies till midnight; which was the first source of injury to my eyes,
to the natural weakness of which were added frequent headaches: all of
which not retarding my eagerness after knowledge, he took care to have
me instructed,’ &c. Every page of his works shows the result of this
education. In spite of the occupations of manhood, and the blindness and
melancholy of old age, he still continued to have his principal pleasure
in that ‘studious and select’ reading, which, though often curiously
transmuted, is perpetually involved in the very texture of his works.
We need not stay to observe how a habit in itself so austere conduces
to the development of an austere character. Deep study, especially deep
study which haunts and rules the imagination, necessarily removes men
from life, absorbs them in themselves; purifies their conduct, with some
risk of isolating their sympathies; developes that loftiness of mood
which is gifted with deep inspirations and indulged with great ideas,
but which tends in its excess to engender a contempt for others, and a
self-appreciation which is even more displeasing to them.
These same tendencies were aggravated also by two defects which are
exceedingly rare in great English authors, and which perhaps Milton
alone amongst those of the highest class is in a remarkable degree
chargeable with. We mean a deficiency in humour, and a deficiency in a
knowledge of plain human nature. Probably when, after the lapse of ages,
English literature is looked at in its larger features only, and in
comparison with other literatures which have preceded or which may follow
it, the critics will lay down that its most striking characteristic
as a whole is its involution, so to say, in life; the degree to which
its book-life resembles real life; the extent to which the motives,
dispositions, and actions of common busy persons are represented in
a medium which would seem likely to give us peculiarly the ideas of
secluded, and the tendencies of meditative men. It is but an aspect of
this fact, that English literature abounds,—some critics will say abounds
excessively,—with humour. This is in some sense the imaginative element
of ordinary life,—the relieving charm, partaking at once of contrast and
similitude, which gives a human and an intellectual interest to the world
of clowns and cottages, of fields and farmers. The degree to which Milton
is deficient in this element is conspicuous in every page of his writings
where its occurrence could be looked for; and if we do not always look
for it, this is because the subjects of his most remarkable works are
on a removed elevation, where ordinary life, the world of ‘cakes and
ale,’ is never thought of and never expected. It is in his dramas, as we
should expect, that Milton shows this deficiency the most. ‘Citizens’
never talk in his pages, as they do in Shakespeare. We feel instinctively
that Milton’s eye had never rested with the same easy pleasure on the
easy, ordinary, shop-keeping world. Perhaps, such is the complication
of art, that it is on the most tragic occasions that we feel this want
the most. It may seem an odd theory, and yet we believe it to be a true
principle, that catastrophes require a comic element. We appear to feel
the same principle in life. We may read solemn descriptions of great
events in history,—say of Lord Strafford’s trial, and of his marvellous
speech, and his appeal to his ‘saint in heaven;’ but we comprehend
the whole transaction much better when we learn from Mr. Baillie, the
eye-witness, that people ate nuts and apples, and talked, and laughed,
and betted on the great question of acquittal and condemnation. Nor
is it difficult to understand why this should be so. It seems to be a
law of the imagination, at least in most men, that it will not bear
concentration. It is essentially a glancing faculty. It goes and comes,
and comes and goes, and we hardly know whence or why. But we most of us
know that when we try to fix it, in a moment it passes away. Accordingly,
the proper procedure of art is to let it go in such a manner as to ensure
its coming back again. The force of artistic contrasts effects exactly
this result. Skilfully-disposed opposites suggest the notion of each
other. We realise more perfectly and easily the great idea, the tragic
conception, when we are familiarised with its effects on the minds of
little people,—with the petty consequences which it causes, as well as
with the enormous forces from which it comes. The catastrophe of Samson
Agonistes discloses Milton’s imperfect mastery of this element of effect.
If ever there was an occasion which admitted its perfect employment,
it was this. The kind of catastrophe is exactly that which is sure to
strike, and strike forcibly, the minds of common persons. If their
observations on the occasion were really given to us, we could scarcely
avoid something rather comic. The eccentricity, so to speak, of ordinary
persons, shows itself peculiarly at such times, and they say the queerest
things. Shakespeare has exemplified this principle most skilfully on
various occasions: it is the sort of art which is just in his way. His
imagination always seems to be floating between the contrasts of things;
and if his mind had a resting-place that it liked, it was this ordinary
view of extraordinary events. Milton was under the great obligation to
use this relieving principle of art in the catastrophe of Samson, because
he has made every effort to heighten the strictly tragic element, which
requires that relief. His art, always serious, was never more serious.
His Samson is not the incarnation of physical strength which the popular
fancy embodies in the character; nor is it the simple and romantic
character of the Old Testament. On the contrary, Samson has become a
Puritan: the observations he makes would have done much credit to a
religious pikeman in Cromwell’s army. In consequence, his death requires
some lightening touches to make it a properly artistic event. The pomp of
seriousness becomes too oppressive.
‘At length for intermission sake they led him
Between the pillars; he his guide requested
(For so from such as nearer stood we heard),
As over-tired, to let him lean a while
With both his arms on those two massy pillars
That to the arched roof gave main support.
He unsuspicious led him; which when Samson
Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined,
And eyes fast fix’d, he stood, as one who pray’d,
Or some great matter in his mind revolved:
At last with head erect thus cry’d aloud,
“Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed
I have perform’d, as reason was, obeying,
Not without wonder or delight beheld:
Now of my own accord such other trial
I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater,
As with amaze shall strike all who behold.”
This utter’d, straining all his nerves he bow’d,
As with the force of winds and waters pent
When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars
With horrible convulsion to and fro.
He tugg’d, he shook, till down they came, and drew
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder,
Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,—Lords,
ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,
Their choice nobility and flower, not only
Of this, but each Philistian city round,
Met from all parts to solemnise this feast.
Samson with these immix’d, inevitably
Pull’d down the same destruction on himself;
The vulgar only ’scaped who stood without.
_Chor._ O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
Living or dying thou hast fulfill’d
The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now ly’st victorious
Among thy slain self-kill’d,
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoin’d
Thee with thy slaughter’d foes, in number more
Than all thy life hath slain before.’
This is grave and fine; but Shakespeare would have done it differently
and better.
We need not pause to observe how certainly this deficiency in humour
and in the delineation of ordinary human feeling is connected with a
recluse, a solitary, and to some extent an unsympathising life. If we
combine a certain natural aloofness from common men with literary habits
and an incessantly studious musing, we shall at once see how powerful a
force is brought to bear on an instinctively austere character, and how
sure it will be to develope the peculiar tendencies of it, both good and
evil. It was to no purpose that Milton seems to have practised a sort of
professional study of life. No man could rank more highly the importance
to a poet of an intellectual insight into all-important pursuits and
‘seemly arts.’ But it is not by the mere intellect that we can take in
the daily occupations of mankind; we must sympathise with them, and see
them in their human relations. A chimney-sweeper, _quâ_ chimney-sweeper,
is not very sentimental; it is in himself that he is so interesting.
Milton’s austere character is in some sort the more evident, because he
possessed in large measure a certain relieving element, in which those
who are eminent in that character are very deficient. Generally such
persons have but obtuse senses. We are prone to attribute the purity of
their conduct to the dullness of their sensations. Milton had no such
obtuseness. He had every opportunity for knowing the world of eye and
ear. You cannot open his works without seeing how much he did know of
it. The austerity of his nature was not caused by the deficiency of his
senses, but by an excess of the warning instinct. Even when he professed
to delineate the world of sensuous delight, this instinct shows itself.
Dr. Johnson thought he could discern melancholy in ‘L’Allegro.’ If he had
said solitariness, it would have been correct.
The peculiar nature of Milton’s character is very conspicuous in the
events of his domestic life, and in the views which he took of the great
public revolutions of his age. We can spare only a very brief space for
the examination of either of these; but we will endeavour to say a few
words upon each of them.
The circumstances of Milton’s first marriage are as singular as any in
the strange series of the loves of the poets. The scene opens with an
affair of business. Milton’s father, as is well known, was a scrivener—a
kind of professional money-lender, then well known in London; and having
been early connected with the vicinity of Oxford, continued afterwards to
have pecuniary transactions of a certain nature with country gentlemen
of that neighbourhood. In the course of these he advanced 500_l._ to a
certain Mr. Richard Powell, a squire of fair landed estate, residing
at Forest Hill, which is about four miles from the city of Oxford. The
money was lent on the 11th of June 1627; and a few months afterwards Mr.
Milton the elder gave 312_l._ of it to his son the poet, who was then a
youth at college, and made a formal memorandum of the same in the form
then usual, which still exists. The debt was never wholly discharged;
for in 1651 we find Milton declaring on oath that he had never received
more than 180_l._, ‘in part satisfaction of his said just and principal
debt, with damages for the same and his costs of suit.’ Mr. Keightley
supposes him to have ‘taken many a ride over to Forest Hill’ after he
left Cambridge and was living at Horton, which is not very far distant;
but of course this is only conjecture. We only know that about 1643 ‘he
took,’ as his nephew relates, ‘a journey into the country, nobody about
him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey of
recreation. After a month’s stay he returns a married man, who set out a
bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell,
then a justice of the peace’ for the county of Oxford. The suddenness of
the event is rather striking; but Philips was at the time one of Milton’s
pupils, and it is possible that some pains may have been taken to conceal
the love-affair from the ‘young gentlemen.’ Still, as Philips was
Milton’s nephew, he was likely to hear such intelligence tolerably early;
and as he does not seem to have done so, the _dénouement_ was probably
rather prompt. At any rate, he was certainly married at that time, and
took his bride home to his house in Aldersgate Street; and there was
feasting and gaiety according to the usual custom of such events. A
few weeks after, the lady went home to her friends, in which there was
of course nothing remarkable; but it is singular that when the natural
limit of her visit at home was come, she absolutely refused to return to
her husband. The grounds of so strange a resolution are very difficult
to ascertain. Political feeling ran very high: old Mr. Powell adhered
to the side of the king, and Milton to that of the parliament; and this
might be fancied to have caused an estrangement. But on the other hand,
these circumstances must have been well known three months before.
Nothing had happened in that quarter of a year to change very materially
the position of the two parties in the State. Some other cause for Mrs.
Milton’s conduct must be looked for. She herself is said to have stated
that she did not like her husband’s ‘spare diet and hard study.’ No
doubt, too, she found it dull in London; she had probably always lived
in the country, and must have been quite unaccustomed to the not very
pleasant scene in which she found herself. Still, many young ladies have
married schoolmasters, and many young ladies have gone from Oxfordshire
to London; and nevertheless, no such dissolution of matrimonial harmony
is known to have occurred.