beginning, may be confident of no end--which is the peculiar of that
necessary essence that can not destroy itself--and the highest strain
of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even
from power of itself; all others have a dependent being and within the
reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality
frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either states after
death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy
our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or
names, hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of
chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration;
and to hold long subsistences, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man
is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave,
solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal luster, nor omitting
ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of nature.
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sum within us. A
small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after
death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like
Sardanapalus; but wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal
blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies,
wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner,
and an urn.
Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus.[73] The man of
God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by
angels, and adjudged to obscurity, tho not without some marks
directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without either tomb or
burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of
perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict account being
still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this
stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all
die but be changed, according to received translation, the last day
will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will anticipate
lasting sepultures. Some graves will be opened before they be quite
closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared to die, shall
groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second and
living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when men shall
wish the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilations
shall be courted.
While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined
them, and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not
acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaric seems most subtle, who had a
river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, that thought
himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and
stones thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes
innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid
to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among
the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.
Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vainglory,
and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous
resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon
pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that
infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their
diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency.
Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while
they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their
fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand
Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction,
transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and
ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome
anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the
earth is ashes unto them.
To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to
exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large
satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their
elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief.
To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope,
but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St.
Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything,
in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the
moles of Hadrianus.[74]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 70: From the "Religio Medici."]
[Footnote 71: From Chapter V of "Urn Burial; or, a Discourse of the
Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk."]
[Footnote 72: Cambyses III, king of Persia who conquered Egypt in 525
B.C.]
[Footnote 73: A Roman emperor whose epitaph was cut in Greek, Latin,
Hebrew, Egyptian and Arabic.]
[Footnote 74: Now the Castle of St. Angelo in Rome.]
JOHN MILTON
Born in 1608, died in 1674; visited Italy in 1638; began his
poetical writings in 1640; Latin Secretary to the
Commonwealth in 1649; became totally blind in 1652; spared
at the Restoration under the Indemnity Act; published
"Paradise Lost" in 1667.
I
ON HIS OWN LITERARY AMBITION[75]
After I had, from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care
of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the tongues,
and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and
teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether
aught was imposed me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to
of my own choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but
chiefly the latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was
likely to live. But much latelier, in the private academies of Italy,
whither I was favored to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I
had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout--for the manner
is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading
there--met with acceptance above what was looked for; and other things
which I had shifted, in scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch
up among them, were received with written encomiums, which the
Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps, I began
thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home;
and not less to an inward prompting, which now grew daily upon me,
that by labor and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this
life, joined to the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written, to after-times, as they should not willingly let
it die.
These thoughts at once possest me, and these other, that if I were
certain to write as men buy leases, for three lives and downward,
there ought no regard be sooner had than to God's glory, by the honor
and instruction of my country. For which cause, and not only for that
I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latins,
I applied myself to that resolution which Ariosto followed against the
persuasions of Bembo,[76] to fix all the industry and art I could
unite to the adorning of my native tongue; not to make verbal
curiosities the end--that were a toilsome vanity; but to be an
interpreter, and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own
citizens throughout this island, in the mother dialect. That what the
greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those
Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this
over and above, of being a Christian, might do for mine; not caring
to be once named abroad, tho perhaps I could attain to that, but
content with these British islands as my world; whose fortune hath
hitherto been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their small
deeds great and renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had
her noble achievements made small by the unskilful handling of monks
and mechanics.
Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse, to give any
certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of
her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, tho of highest hope
and hardest attempting. Whether that epic form, whereof the two poems
of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and
the book of Job a brief, model; or whether the rules of Aristotle
herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed, which in
them that know art, and use judgment, is no transgression, but an
enriching of art. And, lastly, what king or knight before the Conquest
might be chosen, in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero. And
as Tasso gave to a prince of Italy his choice, whether he would
command him to write of Godfrey's[77] expedition against the infidels,
or Belisarius against the Goths, or Charlemagne against the Lombards;
if to the instinct of nature and the emboldening of art aught may be
trusted, and that there be nothing adverse in our climate, or the fate
of this age, it haply would be no rashness, from an equal diligence
and inclination, to present the like offer in our own ancient
stories. Or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein Sophocles
and Euripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a
nation.
The Scripture also affords us a fine pastoral drama in the Song of
Solomon, consisting of two persons, and a double chorus, as Origen[78]
rightly judges; and the Apocalypse of St. John is the majestic image
of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up and intermingling her
solemn scenes and acts with a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and
harping symphonies. And this my opinion, the grave authority of
Paræus, commenting that book, is sufficient to confirm. Or if occasion
shall lead, to imitate those magnific odes and hymns, wherein Pindarus
and Callimachus are in most things worthy, some others in their frame
judicious, in their matter most, and end faulty. But those frequent
songs throughout the law and prophets, beyond all these, not in their
divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition,
may be easily made appear, over all the kinds of lyric poesy, to be
incomparable.
These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of
God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some--tho most abuse--in every
nation: and are of power, besides of the office of a pulpit, to
inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public
civility; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the
affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the
throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he suffers to be
wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies
of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious
nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ;
to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice
and God's true worship.
Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid
and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe; teaching over the
whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of
example, with such delight to those, especially of soft and delicious
temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself, unless they
see her elegantly drest, that whereas the paths of honesty and good
life appear now rugged and difficult, tho they be indeed easy and
pleasant, they would then appear to all men both easy and pleasant,
tho they were rugged and difficult indeed.
II
A COMPLETE EDUCATION DEFINED[79]
And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough
for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the
languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious
after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us
things useful to be known. And tho a linguist should pride himself to
have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have
not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and
lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any
yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence
appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so
unpleasing and so unsuccessful: first, we do amiss to spend seven or
eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and
Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one
year.
And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our
time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and
universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty
wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are
the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by
long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention.
These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood
out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit; besides the ill
habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and
Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet
not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing
among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste: whereas, if
after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got
into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short
book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to
learn the substance of good things and arts in due order, which would
bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be
the most rational and most profitable way of learning languages, and
whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent
herein.
And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old
error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic
grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most
easy--and those be such as are most obvious to the sense--they present
their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most
intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics, so that they
having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they
stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction,
and now on the sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed
and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet
deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and
contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged
notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful
knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately
their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either
to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity; some
allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes, not on the
prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was
never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of
litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them
to state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true
generous breeding, that flattery and courtshifts, and tyrannous
aphorisms, appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling
their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery; if, as I rather
think, it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy
spirit, retire themselves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of
ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity; which,
indeed, is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they
were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and
these are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at schools and
universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things
chiefly as were better unlearned.
I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration of what we
should do, but straight conduct you to a hillside, while I will point
you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious,
indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of
goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of
Orpheus was not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall have more ado
to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the
infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hale and
drag our choicest and hopefulest wits to that asinine feast of sow
thistles and brambles which is commonly set before them, as all the
food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docile age.
I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits
a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the
offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
III
ON READING IN HIS YOUTH[80]
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 honorablest things; not
presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless
he have in himself the experience and the practise of all that which
is praiseworthy. These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of
nature, an honest haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was,
or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that
modesty, whereof, tho not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused
to make some beseeming profession; all these uniting the supply of
their natural aid together kept me still above those low descents of
mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree
to salable and unlawful prostitutions.
Next (for hear me out now, readers), that I may tell ye whither my
younger feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and
romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood
founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all
Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he
should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it
so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence
even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the
defense of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of
themselves, had sworn. And if I found in the story afterward, any of
them, by word or deed, breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault
of the poet, as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written
indecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every
free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight,
nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his
shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arms, to secure
and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even these
books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose
living, I can not think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to
me so many incitements, as you have heard to the love and stedfast
observation of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes.
IV
IN DEFENSE OF BOOKS[81]
I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and
Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as
well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest
justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead
things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as
that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a
vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that
bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as
those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance
to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be
used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man
kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good
book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the
eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the
precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life,
whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not
oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole
nations fare the worse.
We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the
living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man,
preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may
be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the
whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not
in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and
fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality
rather than a life. But lest I should be condemned of introducing
license, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so
much historical, as will serve to show what hath been done by ancient
and famous commonwealths against this disorder, till the very time
that this project of licensing crept out of the inquisition, was
catched up by our prelates and hath caught some of our presbyters.
In Athens, where books and wits were ever busier than in any other
part of Greece, I find but only two sorts of writings which the
magistrate cared to take notice of; those either blasphemous and
atheistical, or libelous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by the
judges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himself banished the
territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know
"whether there were gods, or whether not." And against defaming, it
was agreed that none should be traduced by name, as was the manner of
Vetus Comoedia, whereby we may guess how they censured libeling.
And this course was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both the
desperate wits of other atheists, and the open way of defaming, as the
event showed. Of other sects and opinions, tho tending to
voluptuousness, and the denying of Divine Providence, they took no
heed.
Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine
school of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever
questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of
those old comedians were supprest tho the acting of them were forbid;
and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of
them all, to his royal scholar Dionysius, is commonly known, and may
be excused, if holy Chrysostom, as is reported, nightly studied so
much the same author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence
into the style of a rousing sermon.
That other leading city of Greece, Lacedemon, considering that
Lycurgus, their lawgiver, was so addicted to elegant learning, as to
have been the first that brought out of Ionia the scattered works of
Homer, and sent the poet Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the
Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant
among them law end civility, it is to be wondered how useless and
unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed
no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but their own
laconic apothegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out
of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own
soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his
broad verses, they were not therein so cautious, but were as dissolute
in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirms in
"Andromache," that their women were all unchaste. Thus much may give
us light after what sort of books were prohibited among the Greeks.