"And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show."
(_Il Penseroso._)
[Illustration: Il Penseroso colour plate]
"Yet, Mr. Milton, thee hast the reputation of such scope and range of
wisdom, as the greatest scholar in Europe might fitly envy. To me, I
confess, in my poor unlettered ignorance, it is not conceivable in what
manner thee acquired so great and witty powers."
"I gathered them not of mine own strength," said Milton, "but they were
mine for the asking and endeavour, and any man may obtain them in like
fashion. I ceased not, nor will cease, in devout prayer to the Holy
Spirit, that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out
his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify
the lips of whom He pleases. To this must be added select reading, and
steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and
affairs.... And now, good Tom, to reading."
Elwood took up the Latin author which he was at present engaged upon,
and proceeded with it. Whenever the preternaturally acute ear of Milton
detected, by Elwood's intonation, that he did not quite understand a
sentence, he would stop him, examine him, and elucidate the difficult
passage. By and by, "You will find a saying very similar to that," he
observed, "in Virgil his Fourth Eclogue. Fetch down the book, and let us
hear what the Mantuan hath written therein."
Elwood searched along the bookshelves, but to no avail. "Friend," said
he, "thy Virgil is no longer here. Yesterday I handled it myself,--to-day
it is vanished. So is the Lucretius." A frown contracted Milton's
splendid brow. "These women-kind," he muttered like rumbling thunder,
"they are verily the root of all evil. Bid me hither my wife and
daughters, and Mary Fisher the maid moreover." The first and the last,
being summoned, arrived in all haste, and disavowed any knowledge of the
missing books. Anne and Mary Milton, it appeared, were gone out
marketing: but little Deborah, being strictly cross-examined, confessed
that she had seen sister Anne carrying books away from the study last
night when their father had retired: the wherewithal for "marketing"
was easily obtained in this way.
Milton groaned in his ineptitude. "How have I deserved this treacherous
dealing at their hands? Lord, how long shall I be
dark in light exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors and without, still as a fool
In power of others, never in my own?
(_Samson Agonistes_).
Here, by a happy coincidence, there was a sturdy hammering heard at the
front door, and Andrew Marvell was ushered in, "I am out of my due
time," said he, "for it is not yet gone six,"--(six to eight P.M. being
Milton's best time for receiving visitors). "Yet to so old an offender
as myself, John, I know thou wilt make an exception." Marvell was the
one friend of his own type and standing, the one constant and
inalienable comrade, upon whose fidelity the blind man could rely. He had
formerly been Milton's colleague under the Cromwellian Government: and
was his kindred spirit, so far as anyone could claim such relationship
with the frozen heights of the poet's intellect.
With him, during the next two hours--the learned physician Paget joining
them, and Elwood listening in respectful silence to the converse of these
mighty men--Milton forgot the vexations of his ill-assorted household. He
assured his friends that he was truly far happier now, in poverty,
infirmity and neglect, occupied solely upon his long-projected
masterpiece, than during the eighteen years of his manly prime, when his
mind and pen were solely employed upon the controversies which he now
professed to hate. "Never again," he declared, "shall earthly ambitions
interrupt and thwart me: never now shall I endure to leave a calm and
pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to
embark in a tumbled sea of noises and hoarse disputes. Cast out of my
fool's Paradise of fame not worth the finding, shall, not I and the hope
whereunto I am wedded explore some fair and fragrant tract of outer
Eden? Even as I have set forth the banishment of our first parents:
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
(_Paradise Lost_).