CHAPTER II. RESIDENCE AT HORTON--L'ALLEGRO--IL PENSEROSO--AUCADES
--COMUS--LYCIDAS
CHAPTER III. JOURNEY TO ITALY
SECOND PERIOD. 1640-1660.
CHAPTER IV. EDUCATIONAL THEORY--TEACHING
CHAPTER V. MARRIAGE AND PAMPHLET ON DIVORCE
CHAPTER VI. PAMPHLETS
CHAPTER VII. BIOGRAPHICAL. 1640-1649
CHAPTER VIII THE LATIN SECRETARYSHIP
CHAPTER IX. MILTON AND MORUS--BLINDNESS
CHAPTER X. MILTON AND MOSES--THE SECOND DEFENSE--THE DEFENSE FOR
HIMSELF
CHAPTER XI. LATIN SECRETARYSHIP COMES TO AN END--MILTON'S FRIENDS
THIRD PERIOD. 1660--1674
CHAPTER XII. BIOGRAPHICAL--LITERARY OCCUPATION--RELIGIOUS OPINIONS
CHAPTER XIII.PARADISE LOST--PARADISE REGAINED--SAMSON AGONISTES
INDEX
MILTON.
_FIRST PERIOD_. 1608-1639.
CHAPTER I.
FAMILY--SCHOOL--COLLEGE.
In the seventeenth century it was not the custom to publish two
volumes upon every man or woman whose name had appeared on a
title-page. Nor, where lives of authors were written, were they
written with the redundancy of particulars which is now allowed.
Especially are the lives of the poets and dramatists obscure and
meagrely recorded. Of Milton, however, we know more personal details
than of any man of letters of that age. Edward Phillips, the poet's
nephew, who was brought up by his uncle, and lived in habits of
intercourse with him to the last, wrote a life, brief, inexact,
superficial, but valuable from the nearness of the writer to the
subject of his memoir. A cotemporary of Milton, John Aubrey (b.1625),
"a very honest man, and accurate in his accounts of matters of fact,"
as Toland says of him, made it his business to learn all he could
about Milton's habits. Aubrey was himself acquainted with Milton, and
diligently catechised thepoet's widow, his brother, and his nephew,
scrupulously writing down each detail as it came to him, in the
minutee of lives which he supplied to Antony Wood to be worked up in
his _Athenae_ and _Fasti_. Aubrey was only an antiquarian collector,
and was mainly dependent on what could be learned from the family.
None of Milton's family, and least of all Edward Phillips, were of a
capacity to apprehend moral or mental qualities, and they could only
tell Aubrey of his goings out and his comings in, of the clothes
he wore, the dates of events, the names of his acquaintance. In
compensation for the want of observation on the part of his own kith
and kin, Milton himself, with a superb and ingenuous egotism,
has revealed the secret of his thoughts and feelings in numerous
autobiographical passages of his prose writings. From what he directly
communicates, and from what he unconsciously betrays, we obtain an
internal life of the mind, more ample than that external life of the
bodily machine, which we owe to Aubrey and Phillips.
In our own generation all that printed books or written documents
have preserved about Milton has been laboriously brought together by
Professor David Masson, in whose _Life of Milton_ we have the most
exhaustive biography that ever was compiled of any Englishman. It is a
noble and final monument erected to the poet's memory, two centuries
after his death. My excuse for attempting to write of Milton alter Mr.
Masson is that his life is in six volumes octavo, with a total of some
four to five thousand pages. The present outline is written for a
different class of readers, those, namely, who cannot afford to know
more of Milton than can be told in some two hundred and fifty pages.
A family of Miltons, deriving the name in all probability from the
parish of Great Milton near Thame, is found in various branches spread
over Oxfordshire and the adjoining counties in the reign of Elisabeth.
The poet's grandfather was a substantial yeoman, living at Stanton St.
John, about five miles from Oxford, within the forest of Shotover, of
which he was also an under-ranger. The ranger's son John was at school
in Oxford, possibly as a chorister, conformed to the Established
Church, and was in consequence cast off by his father, who adhered
to the old faith. The disinherited son went up to London, and by
the assistance of a friend was set up in business as a scrivener. A
scrivener discharged some of the functions which, at the present day,
are undertaken for us in a solicitor's office. John Milton the father,
being a man of probity and force of character, was soon on the way to
acquire "a plentiful fortune." But he continued to live over his shop,
which was in Bread Street, Cheapside, and which bore the sign of the
Spread Eagle, the family crest.
It was at the Spread Eagle that his eldest son, John Milton, was
born, 9th December, 1608, being thus exactly contemporary with Lord
Clarendon, who also died in the same year as the poet. Milton must be
added to the long roll of our poets who have been natives of the
city which now never sees sunlight or blue sky, along with Chaucer,
Spenser, Herrick, Cowley, Shirley, Ben Jonson, Pope, Gray, Keats.
Besides attending as a day-scholar at St. Paul's School, which was
close at hand, his father engaged for him a private tutor at home. The
household of the Spread Eagle not only enjoyed civic prosperity, but
some share of that liberal cultivation, which, if not imbibed in the
home, neither school nor college ever confers. The scrivener was not
only an amateur in music, but a composer, whose tunes, songs, and airs
found their way into the best collections of music. Both schoolmaster
and tutor were men of mark. The high master of St. Paul's at that time
was Alexander Gill, an M.A. of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who was
"esteemed to have such an excellent way of training up youth, that
none in his time went beyond it." The private tutor was Thomas Young,
who was, or had been, curate to Mr. Gataker, of Rotherhithe, itself
a certificate of merit, even if we had not the pupil's emphatic
testimony of gratitude. Milton's fourth elegy is addressed to Young,
when, in 1627, he was settled at Hamburg, crediting him with having
first infused into his pupil a taste for classic literature and
poetry. Biographers have derived Milton's Presbyterianism in 1641 from
the lessons twenty years before of this Thomas Young, a Scotchman,
and one of the authors of the _Smectymnuus_. This, however, is a
misreading of Milton's mind--a mind which was an organic whole--"whose
seed was in itself," self-determined; not one whose opinions can be
accounted for by contagion or casual impact.
Of Milton's boyish exercises two have bean preserved. They are English
paraphrases of two of the Davidic Psalms, and were done at the age of
fifteen. That they were thought by himself worth printing in the same
volume with _Comus_, is the most noteworthy thing about them. No words
are so commonplace but that they can be made to yield inference by a
biographer. And even in these school exercises we think we can discern
that the future poet was already a diligent reader of Sylvester's _Du
Bartas_ (1605), the patriarch of Protestant poetry, and of Fairfax's
_Tasso_ (1600). There are other indications that, from very early
years, poetry had assumed a place in Milton's mind, not merely as a
juvenile pastime, but as an occupation of serious import.
Young Gill, son of the high master, a school-fellow of Milton, went
up to Trinity, Oxford, where he got into trouble by being informed
against by Chillingworth, who reported incautious political speeches
of Gill to his godfather, Laud. With Gill Milton corresponded; they
exchanged their verses, Greek, Latin, and English, with a confession
on Milton's part that he prefers English and Latin composition to
Greek; that to write Greek verses in this age is to sing to the deaf.
Gill, Milton finds "a severe critic of poetry, however disposed to be
lenient to his friend's attempts."
If Milton's genius did not announce itself in his paraphrases of
Psalms, it did in his impetuosity in learning, "which I seized with
such eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age, I scarce ever
went to bed before midnight." Such is his own account. And it
is worthnotice that we have here an incidental test of the
trustworthiness of Aubrey's reminiscences. Aubrey's words are, "When
he was very young he studied very hard, and sate up very late,
commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night; and his father ordered
the maid to sit up for him."
He was ready for college at sixteen, not earlier than the usual age
at that period. As his schoolmasters, both the Gills, were Oxford men
(Young was of St. Andrew's), it might have been expected that the
young scholar would have been placed at Oxford. However, it was
determined that he should go to Cambridge, where he was admitted a
pensioner of Christ's, 12th February, 1625, and commenced residence in
the Easter term ensuing. Perhaps his father feared the growing High
Church, or, as it was then called, Arminianism, of his own university.
It so happened, however, that the tutor to whom the young Milton was
consigned was specially noted for Arminian proclivities. This was
William Chappell, then Fellow of Christ's, who so recommended himself
to Laud by his party zeal, that he was advanced to be Provost of
Dublin and Bishop of Cork.
Milton was one of those pupils who are more likely to react against
a tutor than to take a ply from him. A preaching divine--Chappell
composed a treatise on the art of preaching--a narrow ecclesiastic of
the type loved by Land, was exactly the man who would drive Milton
into opposition. But the tutor of the seventeenth century was not
able, like the easy-going tutor of the eighteenth, to leave the young
rebel to pursue the reading of his choice in his own chamber. Chappell
endeavoured to drive his pupil along the scholastic highway of
exercises. Milton, returning to Cambridge after his summer vacation,
eager for the acquisition of wisdom, complains that he "was dragged
from his studies, and compelled to employ himself in composing
some frivolous declamation!" Indocile, as he confesses himself
(indocilisque aetas prava magistra fuit), he kicked against either the
discipline or the exercises exacted by college rules. He was punished.
Aubrey had heard that he was flogged, a thing not impossible in
itself, as the _Admonition Book_ of Emanuel gives an instance of
corporal chastisement as late as 1667. Aubrey's statement, however, is
a dubitative interlineation in his MS., and Milton's age, seventeen,
as well as the silence of his later detractors, who raked up
everything which could be told to his disadvantage, concur to make us
hesitate to accept a fact on so slender evidence. Anyhow, Milton was
sent away from college for a time, in the year 1627, in consequence
of something unpleasant which had occurred. That it was something of
which he was not ashamed is clear, from his alluding to it himself in
the lines written at the time,--
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri
Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
And that the tutor was not considered to have been wholly free from
blame is evident from the fact that the master transferred Milton from
Chappell to another tutor, a very unusual proceeding. Whatever the
nature of the punishment, it was not what is known as rustication; for
Milton did not lose a term, taking his two degrees of B.A. and M.A. in
regular course, at the earliest date from his matriculation permitted
by the statutes. The one outbreak of juvenile petulance and
indiscipline over, Milton's force of character and unusual attainments
acquired him the esteem of his seniors. The nickname of "the lady
of Christ's" given him in derision by his fellow-students, is an
attestation of virtuous conduct. Ten years later, in 1642, Milton
takes an opportunity to "acknowledge publicly, with all grateful
mind, that more than ordinary respect which I found, above many of my
equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows
of that college wherein I spent some years; who, at my parting after I
had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much
better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters
full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long
after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me."
The words "how much better it would content them that I would stay"
have been thought to hint at the offer of a fellowship at Christ's. It
is highly improvable that such an offer was ever made. There had been
two vacancies in the roll of fellows since Milton had become eligible
by taking his B.A. degree, and he had been passed over in favour of
juniors. It is possible that Milton was not statutably eligible, for,
by the statutes of Christ's, there could not be, at one time, more
than two fellows who were natives of the same county. Edward King, who
was Milton's junior, was put in, not by college election, but by
royal mandate. And in universities generally, it is not literature or
general acquirements which recommend a candidate for endowed posts,
but technical skill in the prescribed exercises, and a pedagogic
intention.
Further than this, had a fellowship in his college been attainable, it
would not have had much attraction for Milton. A fellowship implied
two things, residence in college, with teaching, and orders in the
church. With neither of these two conditions was Milton prepared to
comply. In 1632, when he proceeded to his M.A. degree, Milton was
twenty-four, he had been seven years in college, and had therefore
sufficient experience what college life was like. He who was so
impatient of the "turba legentum prava" in the Bodleian library, could
not have patiently consorted with the vulgar-minded and illiterate
ecclesiastics, who peopled the colleges of that day. Even Mede, though
the author of _Clavis Apocalyptica_ was steeped in the soulless
clericalism of his age, could not support his brother-fellows without
frequent retirements to Balsham, "being not willing to be joined
with such company." To be dependent upon Bainbrigge's (the Master of
Christ's) good pleasure for a supply of pupils; to have to live in
daily intercourse with the Powers and the Chappells, such as we know
them from Mede's letters, was an existence to which only the want
of daily bread could have driven Milton. Happily his father's
circumstances were not such as to make a fellowship pecuniarily an
object to the son. If he longed for "the studious cloister's pale,"
he had been, now for seven years, near enough to college life to
have dispelled the dream that it was a life of lettered leisure and
philosophic retirement. It was just about Milton's time that the
college tutor finally supplanted the university professor, a system
which implied the substitution of excercises performed by the pupil
for instruction given by the teacher. Whatever advantages this system
brought with it, it brought inevitably the degradation of the teacher,
who was thus dispensed from knowledge, having only to attend to
form. The time of the college tutor was engrossed by the details of
scholastic superintendence, and the frivolous worry of academical
business. Admissions, matriculations, disputations, declamations, the
formalities of degrees, public reception of royal and noble visitors,
filled every hour of his day, and left no time, even if he had had the
taste, for private study. To teaching, as we shall see, Milton was
far from averse. But then it must be teaching as he understood it, a
teaching which should expand the intellect and raise the character,
not dexterity in playing with the verbal formulae of the disputations
of the schools.
Such an occupation could have no attractions for one who was even now
meditating _Il Penseroso_ (composed 1633). At twenty he had already
confided to his schoolfellow, the younger Gill, the secret of his
discontent with the Cambridge tone. "Here among us," he writes from
college, "are barely one or two who do not flutter off, all unfledged,
into theology, having gotten of philology or of philosophy scarce so
much as a smattering. And for theology they are content with just what
is enough to enable them to patch up a paltry sermon." He retained the
same feeling towards his Alma Mater in 1641, when he wrote (Reason of
Church Government), "Cambridge, which as in the time of her better
health, and mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired, so now
much less...."
On a review of all these indications of feeling, I should conclude
that Milton never had serious thoughts of a college fellowship, and
that his antipathy arose from a sense of his own incompatibility of
temper with academic life, and was not, like Phineas Fletcher's, the
result of disappointed hopes, and a sense of injury for having been
refused a fellowship at King's. One consideration which remains to be
mentioned would alone be decisive in favour of this view. A fellowship
required orders. Milton had been intended for the church, and had been
sent to college with that view. By the time he left Cambridge, at
twenty-four, it had become clear, both to himself and his family, that
he could never submit his understanding to the trammels of church
formularies. His later mind, about 1641, is expressed by himself
in his own forcible style,--"The church, to whose service by the
intention of my parents and friends I was destined of a child, and
in mine own resolutions, till coming to some maturity of years, and
perceiving what tyranny had invaded in the church, that he who would
take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal.... I
thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred
office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing."
When he took leave of the university, in 1632, he had perhaps not
developed this distinct antipathy to the establishment. For in a
letter, preserved in Trinity College, and written in the winter of
1631-32, he does not put forward any conscientious objections to the
clerical profession, but only apologises to the friend to whom the
letter is addressed, for delay in making choice of some profession.
The delay itself sprung from an unconscious distaste. In a mind of
the consistent texture of Milton's, motives are secretly influential
before they emerge in consciousness. We shall not be wrong in
asserting that when he left Cambridge in 1632, it was already
impossible, in the nature of things, that he should have taken orders
in the Church of England, or a fellowship of which orders were a
condition.