We cannot but have a suspicion that she did not like him before marriage,
and that pecuniary reasons had their influence. If, however, Mr. Powell
exerted his paternal influence, it may be admitted that he had unusual
considerations to advance in favour of the alliance he proposed. It is
not every father whose creditors are handsome young gentlemen with fair
incomes. Perhaps it seemed no extreme tyranny to press the young lady a
little to do that which some others might have done without pressing.
Still, all this is but hypothesis; our evidence as to the love-affairs of
the time of King Charles I. is but meagre. But, whatever the feelings of
Miss Powell may have been, those of Mrs. Milton are exceedingly certain.
She would not return to her husband; she did not answer his letters; and
a messenger whom he sent to bring her back was handled rather roughly.
Unquestionably, she was deeply to blame, by far the most to blame of the
two. Whatever may be alleged against him, is as nothing compared with her
offence in leaving him. To defend so startling a course, we must adopt
views of divorce even more extreme than those which Milton was himself
driven to inculcate; and whatever Mrs. Milton’s practice may have been,
it may be fairly conjectured that her principles were strictly orthodox.
Yet, if she could be examined by a commission to the ghosts, she would
probably have some palliating circumstances to allege in mitigation
of judgment. There were, perhaps, peculiarities in Milton’s character
which a young lady might not improperly dislike. The austere and ascetic
character is of course far less agreeable to women than the sensuous
and susceptible. The self-occupation, the pride, the abstraction of the
former are to the female mind disagreeable; studious habits and unusual
self-denial seem to it purposeless; lofty enthusiasm, public spirit, the
solitary pursuit of an elevated ideal, are quite out of its way: they
rest too little on the visible world to be intelligible, they are too
little suggested by the daily occurrences of life to seem possible. The
poet in search of an imaginary phantom has never been successful with
women; there are innumerable proofs of that; and the ascetic moralist
is even less interesting. A character combined out of the two—and this
to some extent was Milton’s—is singularly likely to meet with painful
failure; with a failure the more painful, that it could never anticipate
or explain it. Possibly he was absorbed in an austere self-conscious
excellence; it may never have occurred to him that a lady might prefer
the trivial detail of daily happiness.
Milton’s own view of the matter he has explained to us in his book on
divorce; and it is a very odd one. His complaint was that his wife would
not talk. What he wished in marriage was an ‘intimate and speaking
help;’ he encountered a ‘mute and spiritless mate.’ One of his principal
incitements to the ‘pious necessity of divorcing,’ was an unusual
deficiency in household conversation. A certain loquacity in their
wives has been the complaint of various eminent men; but his domestic
affliction was a different one. The ‘ready and reviving associate,’ whom
he had hoped to have found, appeared to be a ‘co-inhabiting mischief,’
who was sullen, and perhaps seemed bored and tired. And at times he is
disposed to cast the blame of his misfortune on the uninstructive nature
of youthful virtue. The ‘soberest and best-governed men,’ he says, are
least practised in such affairs, are not very well aware that ‘the
bashful muteness’ of a young lady ‘may oft-times hide the unliveliness
and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation;’ and are rather
in too great haste to light the nuptial torch: whereas those ‘who have
lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most
successful in their matches; because their wild affections, unsettling
at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience.’ And
he rather wishes to infer that the virtuous man should, in case of
mischance, have his resource of divorce likewise.
In truth, Milton’s book on divorce—though only containing principles
which he continued to believe long after he had any personal reasons
for wishing to do so—were clearly suggested at first by the unusual
phenomena of his first marriage. His wife began by not speaking to him,
and finished by running away from him. Accordingly, like most books which
spring out of personal circumstances, his treatises on this subject have
a frankness, and a mastery of detail, which others on the same topic
sometimes want. He is remarkably free from one peculiarity of modern
writers on such matters. Several considerate gentlemen are extremely
anxious for the ‘rights of woman.’ They think that women will benefit by
removing the bulwarks which the misguided experience of ages has erected
for their protection. A migratory system of domestic existence might suit
Madame Dudevant, and a few cases of singular exception; but we cannot
fancy that it would be, after all, so much to the taste of most ladies
as the present more permanent system. We have some reminiscence of the
stories of the wolf and the lamb, when we hear amiable men addressing
a female auditory (in books, of course) on the advantages of a freer
‘development.’ We are perhaps wrong, but we cherish an indistinct
suspicion that an indefinite extension of the power of selection would
rather tend to the advantage of the sex which more usually chooses.
But we have no occasion to avow such opinions now. Milton had no such
modern views. He is frankly and honestly anxious for the rights of
the man. Of the doctrine that divorce is only permitted for the help
of wives, he exclaims, ‘Palpably uxorious! who can be ignorant, that
a woman was created for man, and not man for woman? What an injury is
it after wedlock to be slighted! what to be contended with in point of
house-rule who shall be the head; not for any parity of wisdom, for that
were something reasonable, but out of a female pride! “I suffer not,”
saith St. Paul, “the woman to usurp authority over the man.” If the
Apostle could not suffer it,’ he naturally remarks, ‘into what mould is
he mortified that can?’ He had a sincere desire to preserve men from the
society of unsocial and unsympathising women; and that was his principal
idea.
His theory, to a certain extent, partakes of the same notion. The
following passage contains a perspicuous exposition of it: ‘Moses, Deut.
xxiv. 1, established a grave and prudent law, full of moral equity, full
of due consideration towards nature, that cannot be resisted, a law
consenting with the wisest men and civilest nations; that when a man hath
married a wife, if it come to pass that he cannot love her by reason of
some displeasing natural quality or unfitness in her, let him write her
a bill of divorce. The intent of which law undoubtedly was this, that if
any good and peaceable man should discover some helpless disagreement
or dislike, either of mind or body, whereby he could not cheerfully
perform the duty of a husband without the perpetual dissembling of
offence and disturbance to his spirit; rather than to live uncomfortably
and unhappily both to himself and to his wife; rather than to continue
undertaking a duty, which he could not possibly discharge, he might
dismiss her, whom he could not tolerably, and so not conscionably,
retain. And this law the Spirit of God by the mouth of Solomon, Prov.
xxx. 21, 23, testifies to be a good and a necessary law, by granting
it that “a hated woman” (for so the Hebrew word signifies, rather than
“odious,” though it come all to one), that “a hated woman, when she
is married, is a thing that the earth cannot bear.”’ And he complains
that the civil law of modern states interferes with the ‘domestical
prerogative of the husband.’
His notion would seem to have been that a husband was bound not to
dismiss his wife, except for a reason really sufficient; such as a
thoroughly incompatible temper, an incorrigible ‘muteness,’ and a
desertion like that of Mrs. Milton. But he scarcely liked to admit that,
in the use of this power, he should be subject to the correction of
human tribunals. He thought that the circumstances of each case depended
upon ‘utterless facts;’ and that it was practically impossible for a
civil court to decide on a subject so delicate in its essence, and so
imperceptible in its data. But though amiable men doubtless suffer much
from the deficiencies of their wives, we should hardly like to intrust
them, in their own cases, with a jurisdiction so prompt and summary.
We are far from being concerned, however, just now with the doctrine of
divorce on its intrinsic merits: we were only intending to give such an
account of Milton’s opinions upon it as might serve to illustrate his
character. We think we have shown that it is possible there may have
been, in his domestic relations, a little overweening pride; a tendency
to overrate the true extent of masculine rights, and to dwell on his
wife’s duty to be social towards him rather than on his duty to be social
towards her,—to be rather sullen whenever she was not quite cheerful.
Still, we are not defending a lady for leaving her husband for defects of
such inferior magnitude. Few households would be kept together, if the
right of transition were exercised on such trifling occasions. We are
but suggesting that she may share the excuse which our great satirist
has suggested for another unreliable lady: ‘My mother was an angel; but
angels are not always _commodes à vivre_.’
This is not a pleasant part of our subject, and we must leave it. It
is more agreeable to relate that on no occasion of his life was the
substantial excellence of Milton’s character more conclusively shown,
than in his conduct at the last stage of this curious transaction. After
a very considerable interval, and after the publication of his book on
divorce, Mrs. Milton showed a disposition to return to her husband; and,
in spite of his theories, he received her with open arms. With great
Christian patience, he received her relations too. The Parliamentary
party was then victorious; and old Mr. Powell, who had suffered very much
in the cause of the king, lived until his death untroubled, and ‘wholly
to his devotion,’ as we are informed, in the house of his son-in-law.
Of the other occurrences of Milton’s domestic life we have left ourselves
no room to speak; we must turn to our second source of illustration for
his character,—his opinions on the great public events of his time. It
may seem odd, but we believe that a man of austere character naturally
tends _both_ to an excessive party spirit and to an extreme isolation. Of
course, the circumstances which develope the one must be different from
those which are necessary to call out the other: party-spirit requires
companionship; isolation, if we may be pardoned so original a remark,
excludes it. But though, as we have shown, this species of character is
prone to mental solitude, tends to an intellectual isolation where it is
possible and as soon as it can, yet when invincible circumstances throw
it into mental companionship, when it is driven into earnest association
with earnest men on interesting topics, its zeal becomes excessive. Such
a man’s mind is at home only with its own enthusiasm; it is cooped up
within the narrow limits of its own ideas, and it can make no allowance
for those who differ from or oppose them. We may see something of this
excessive party-zeal in Burke. No one’s reasons are more philosophical;
yet no one who acted with a party went further in aid of it or was more
violent in support of it. He forgot what could be said for the tenets of
the enemy; his imagination made that enemy an abstract incarnation of his
tenets. A man, too, who knows that he formed his opinions originally by a
genuine and intellectual process, is but little aware of the undue energy
those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around. Persons who
first acquired their ideas at second-hand are more open to a knowledge of
their own weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force which
there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with
the popular feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most part
by an almost inevitable consequence of the feelings which render it
isolated. Milton is an example of this remark. In the commencement of the
struggle between Charles I. and the Parliament, he sympathised strongly
with the popular movement, and carried to what seems now a strange
extreme his partisanship. No one could imagine that the first literary
Englishman of his time could write the following passage on Charles I.:
‘Who can with patience hear this filthy, rascally Fool speak so
irreverently of Persons eminent both in Greatness and Piety? Dare you
compare King _David_ with King _Charles_; a most Religious King and
Prophet, with a Superstitious Prince, and who was but a Novice in the
Christian Religion; a most prudent, wise Prince with a weak one; a
valiant Prince with a cowardly one; finally, a most just Prince with
a most unjust one? Have you the impudence to commend his Chastity and
Sobriety, who is known to have committed all manner of Leudness in
company with his Confident the Duke of _Buckingham_? It were to no
purpose to inquire into the private Actions of his Life, who publickly at
Plays would embrace and kiss the Ladies.’
Whatever may be the faults of that ill-fated monarch—and they assuredly
were not small—no one would now think this absurd invective to be even
an excusable exaggeration. It misses the true mark altogether, and is
the expression of a strongly imaginative mind, which has seen something
that it did not like, and is unable in consequence to see anything that
has any relation to it distinctly or correctly. But with the supremacy
of the Long Parliament Milton’s attachment to their cause ceased. No one
has drawn a more unfavourable picture of the rule which they established.
Years after their supremacy had passed away, and the restoration of the
monarchy had covered with a new and strange scene the old actors and
the old world, he thrust into a most unlikely part of his _History of
England_ the following attack on them:—
‘But when once the superficiall zeal and popular fumes that acted their
New Magistracy were cool’d and spent in them, strait every one betook
himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, his privat ends before) to
doe as his own profit or ambition ledd him. Then was justice delay’d,
and soon after deni’d: spight and favour determin’d all: hence faction,
thence treachery, both at home and in the field: ev’ry where wrong, and
oppression: foull and horrid deeds committed daily, or maintain’d, in
secret, or in open. Som who had bin call’d from shops and warehouses,
without other merit, to sit in Supreme Councills and Committees as thir
breeding was, fell to huckster the Commonwealth. Others did therafter as
men could soothe and humour them best; so hee who would give most, or,
under covert of hypocriticall zeale, insinuat basest, enjoy’d unworthily
the rewards of lerning and fidelity; or escap’d the punishment of his
crimes and misdeeds. Thir Votes and Ordinances, which men looked should
have contain’d the repealing of bad laws, and the immediat constitution
of better, resounded with nothing els, but new Impositions, Taxes,
Excises; yeerly, monthly, weekly. Not to reckon the Offices, Gifts, and
Preferments bestow’d and shar’d among themselvs.’
His dislike of this system of committees, and of the generally dull
and unemphatic administration of the Commonwealth, attached him to the
Puritan army and to Cromwell; but in the continuation of the passage we
have referred to, he expresses, with something, let it be said, of a
schoolmaster feeling, an unfavourable judgment on their career.
‘For _Britan_, to speak a truth not oft’n spok’n, as it is a Land
fruitful enough of men stout and courageous in warr, soe it is naturally
not over-fertill of men able to govern justly and prudently in peace,
trusting onely in thir Motherwit; who consider not justly, that civility,
prudence, love of the Publick good, more then of money or vaine honour,
are to this soile in a manner outlandish; grow not here, but in mindes
well implanted with solid and elaborat breeding, too impolitic els and
rude, if not headstrong and intractable to the industry and vertue either
of executing or understanding true Civill Government. Valiant indeed,
and prosperous to win a field; but to know the end and reason of winning,
unjudicious, and unwise: in good or bad succes, alike unteachable. For
the Sun, which wee want, ripens wits as well as fruits; and as Wine and
Oil are imported to us from abroad, soe must ripe understanding, and
many Civill Vertues, be imported into our mindes from Foren Writings,
and examples of best Ages; we shall els miscarry still, and com short
in the attempts of any great enterprize. Hence did thir Victories prove
as fruitles, as thir Losses dang’rous; and left them still conq’ring
under the same greevances, that Men suffer conquer’d: which was indeed
unlikely to goe otherwise, unles Men more then vulgar bred up, as few of
them were, in the knowledg of antient and illustrious deeds, invincible
against many and vaine Titles, impartial to Freindships and Relations,
had conducted thir Affairs: but then from the Chapman to the Retailer,
many whose ignorance was more audacious then the rest, were admitted
with all thir sordid Rudiments to bear no meane sway among them, both in
Church and State.’
We need not speak of Milton’s disapprobation of the Restoration. Between
him and the world of Charles II. the opposition was inevitable and
infinite. Therefore the general fact remains, that except in the early
struggles, when he exaggerated the popular feeling, he remained solitary
in opinion, and had very little sympathy with any of the prevailing
parties of his time.
Milton’s own theory of government is to be learned from his works. He
advocated a free commonwealth, without rule of a single person, or House
of Lords: but the form of his projected commonwealth was peculiar. He
thought that a certain perpetual council, which should be elected by
the nation once for all, and the number of which should be filled up
as vacancies might occur, was the best possible machine of government.
He did not confine his advocacy to abstract theory, but proposed the
immediate establishment of such a council in this country. We need not
go into an elaborate discussion to show the errors of this conclusion.
Hardly any one, then or since, has probably adopted it. The interest of
the theoretical parts of Milton’s political works is entirely historical.
The tenets advocated are not of great value, and the arguments by which
he supports them are perhaps of less; but their relation to the times in
which they were written gives them a very singular interest. The time
of the Commonwealth was the only period in English history in which the
fundamental questions of government have been thrown open for popular
discussion in this country. We read in French literature discussions
on the advisability of establishing a monarchy, on the advisability
of establishing a republic, on the advisability of establishing an
empire; and, before we proceed to examine the arguments, we cannot help
being struck at the strange contrast which this multiplicity of open
questions presents to our own uninquiring acquiescence in the hereditary
polity which has descended to us. ‘King, Lords, and Commons’ are, we
think, ordinances of nature. Yet Milton’s political writings embody the
reflections of a period when, for a few years, the government of England
was nearly as much a subject of fundamental discussion as that of France
was in 1851. An ‘invitation to thinkers,’ to borrow the phrase of Neckar,
was given by the circumstances of the time; and, with the habitual
facility of philosophical speculation, it was accepted, and used to the
utmost.
Such are not the kind of speculations in which we expect assistance from
Milton. It is not in its transactions with others, in its dealings with
the manifold world, that the isolated and austere mind shows itself to
the most advantage. Its strength lies in itself. It has ‘a calm and
pleasing solitariness.’ It hears thoughts which others cannot hear.
It enjoys the quiet and still air of delightful studies; and is ever
conscious of such musing and poetry ‘as is not to be obtained by the
invocation of Dame Memory and her twin daughters, but by devout prayer to
that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar.’
‘Descend from Heav’n, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art call’d, whose voice divine
Following, above th’ Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegaséan wing.
The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwell’st, but heav’nly born:
Before the hills appear’d, or fountain flow’d,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of th’ Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by Thee
Into the Heav’n of Heav’ns I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy temp’ring. With like safety guided down,
Return me to my native element;
Lest from this flying steed, unrein’d (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime),
Dismounted, on th’ Aleian field I fall
Erroneous there to wander and forlorn.
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal sphere;
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days,
On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compass’d round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit’st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east: still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few;
But drive far off the barb’rous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamour drown’d
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores;
For thou art heav’nly, she an empty dream.’
‘An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in
a small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow-chair, and
dressed neatly in black: pale, but not cadaverous.’ ‘He used also to sit
in a gray coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields,
in warm, sunny weather;’ and the common people said he was inspired.
If from the man we turn to his works, we are struck at once with two
singular contrasts. The first of them is this. The distinction between
ancient and modern art is sometimes said, and perhaps truly, to consist
in the simple bareness of the imaginative conceptions which we find in
ancient art, and the comparatively complex clothing in which all modern
creations are embodied. If we adopt this distinction, Milton seems in
some sort ancient, and in some sort modern. Nothing is so simple as the
subject-matter of his works. The two greatest of his creations, the
character of Satan and the character of Eve, are two of the simplest—the
latter probably the very simplest—in the whole field of literature. On
this side Milton’s art is classical. On the other hand, in no writer
is the imagery more profuse, the illustrations more various, the dress
altogether more splendid. And in this respect the style of his art seems
romantic and modern. In real truth, however, it is only ancient art in a
modern disguise. The dress is a mere dress, and can be stripped off when
we will. We all of us do perhaps in memory strip it off for ourselves.
Notwithstanding the lavish adornments with which her image is presented,
the character of Eve is still the simplest sort of feminine essence—the
pure embodiment of that inner nature, which we believe and hope that
women have. The character of Satan, though it is not so easily described,
has nearly as few elements in it. The most purely modern conceptions will
not bear to be unclothed in this matter. Their romantic garment clings
inseparably to them. Hamlet and Lear are not to be thought of except as
complex characters, with very involved and complicated embodiments. They
are as difficult to draw out in words as the common characters of life
are; that of Hamlet, perhaps, is more so. If we make it, as perhaps we
should, the characteristic of modern and romantic art that it presents
us with creations which we cannot think of or delineate except as very
varied, and, so to say, circumstantial, we must not rank Milton among
the masters of romantic art. And without involving the subject in the
troubled sea of an old controversy, we may say that the most striking of
the poetical peculiarities of Milton is the bare simplicity of his ideas,
and the rich abundance of his illustrations.