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The Academy Series of English Classics
_MILTON_
MINOR POEMS
L'Allegro Il Penseroso Comus
Arcades On the Nativity Lycidas
On Shakespeare At a Solemn Music Sonnets
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
SAMUEL THURBER
ALLYN AND BACON
_Boston and Chicago_
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY SAMUEL THURBER.
_Norwood Press_
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
Preface
Outlines of the Life of Milton
TEXT:
On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
On Shakespeare
L'Allegro
Il Penseroso
Arcades
At a Solemn Music
Comus
Lycidas
Sonnets:
I. To the Nightingale
II. On his having arrived at the Age of Twenty-three 68
VIII. When the Assault was intended to the City 69
IX. To a Virtuous Young Lady 70
X. To the Lady Margaret Ley 70
XIII. To Mr. H. Lawes on his Airs 71
XV. On the Lord General Fairfax, at the Siege of Colchester 72
XVI. To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652 72
XVII. To Sir Henry Vane the Younger 73
XVIII. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont 74
XIX. On his Blindness 74
XX. To Mr. Lawrence 75
XXI. To Cyriack Skinner 76
XXII. To the Same 76
XXIII. On his Deceased Wife 77
Notes 79
PREFACE.
The purpose held in view by those who place the study of Milton in high
school English courses is twofold: first, that youth may seasonably
become acquainted with a portion of our great classic poetry; and,
secondly, that they may in this poetry encounter and learn to conquer
difficulties more serious than those they have met in the literature they
have hitherto read. It is for the teacher to see to it that both these
aims are attained. The pupil must read with interest, and he must expect
at the same time to have to do some strenuous thinking and not to object
to turning over many books.
The average pupil will not at first read anything of Milton with perfect
enjoyment. He will, with his wonted docility, commit passages to memory,
and he will do his best to speak these passages with the elocution on
which you insist. But the taste for this poetry is an acquired one, and
in the acquisition usually costs efforts quite alien to the prevailing
conceptions of reading as a pleasurable recreation.
The task of pedagogy at this point becomes delicate. First of all, the
teacher must recognize the fact that his class will not, however good
their intentions, leap to a liking for Comus or Lycidas or even for the
Nativity Ode. It is of no use to assign stanzas or lines as lessons and
to expect these to be studied to a conclusion like a task of French
translation. The only way not to be disappointed in the performance of
the class is to expect nothing. It will be well at first, except where
the test is quite simple, for the teacher to read it himself, making
comment, in the way of explanation, as he goes on. Now and then he will
stop and have a little quiz to hold attention. When classical allusions
come up requiring research, the teacher will tell in what books the
matter may be looked up, and will show how other poets, or Milton
elsewhere, have played with the same piece of history or mythology. Thus
a poem may be dealt with for a number of days. Repetition is, to a
certain extent, excellent. The verses begin to sink into the young minds;
the measure appeals to the inborn sense of rhythm; the poem is caught by
the ear like a piece of music; the utterance of it becomes more like
singing than speaking. In fact, the great secret of teaching poetry in
school is to get rid of the commonplace manner of speech befitting a
recitation in language or science, and to put in practice the obvious
truth that verse has its own form, which is very different from the form
of prose. But repetition may go too far. Over-familiarity may beget
indifference. Other poems await the attention of the class.
The teacher who really means to interest his classes, and begins by being
interested and interesting himself, will rarely fail to accomplish his
purpose. The principal obstacle to success here is the necessity, that
frequently exists, of conforming to the custom of examining, marking, and
ranking--a practice that thwarts genuine personal influence, formalizes
all procedures, and tends to deaden natural interest by substituting for
it the artificial interest of school standing. The Milton lesson must be
a serious one because it is given to the study of the serious work of the
gravest and most high-minded of men; and it must be an enjoyable one
because it deals with the verse of the most musical of poets, and because
one mood of joy is the only mood in which literature can be profitably
studied.
As to the difficulties which the learner first encounters when he comes
to Milton, these grow sometimes out of the diction, sometimes out of the
syntax, and sometimes out of the poet's figures and allusions. Some
difficulties can be explained at once and completely. Others cannot be
explained at all with any reasonable hope of touching the beginner's mind
with matter that he can appropriate. Often the young reader slips over
points of possible learned annotation without the least consciousness
that here great scholarship might make an imposing display. Perfectly
useless is it to set forth for the pupil the interesting echoes from
ancient poets which generations of delving scholars have accumulated in
their notes to Milton, pleasing as these are to mature readers.
The rule should be to expound and illustrate sufficiently to remove those
perplexities which really tease the pupil's mind and cause him to feel
dissatisfaction with himself. In many cases our only course is to
postpone exposition and to trust that the learner will grow up to the
insight which he as yet does not possess and which we cannot possibly
give him. A learned writer, like Milton, who has read all antiquity, and
who has no purpose of writing for children, inevitably contemplates a
public of men approximately his equals in culture, and expects to find
"fit audience, though few."
But many of the difficulties that confront the beginner in Milton ask
only to be explained at once by some one who has had more experience in
the older literature. Archaic forms of words and expressions, with which
the ripe student is familiar, worry the tyro, and must be accounted for.
Often the common dictionaries will give all needed help; but the best
means of acquiring speedy familiarity with obsolete and rare forms is a
Milton concordance--such as that of Bradshaw--in connection with the
Century Dictionary, or with the Oxford Dictionary, so far as this goes.
These means of easy research should be at hand. I find that pupils often
need a pretty sharp spur to make them use even their abridged
dictionaries. But so far as concerns acquaintance with the vocabulary of
poetic diction, nothing will do except the dictionary habit, accompanied
by an effort of the memory to retain what has been learned.
Difficulties that lurk in an involved syntax the pupil may usually be
expected to solve by study. But such a peculiar construction as that in
Sonnet X 9 will probably have to be explained to him.
In the puritan theology and its implications he cannot take much
interest, and will of course not be asked to do so. But high school
students of Milton will ordinarily, in their historical courses, have
come down to the times in which the poet lived, will understand his
relation to public events, and will appreciate his feeling toward the
English ecclesiastical system. Puritanism, a phenomenon of the most
tremendous importance at a certain period of English history, has so
completely disappeared from the modern world, that the utterances of a
seventeenth-century poet, professedly a partisan, on matters of church
and state, no longer exasperate, and can barely even interest, students
of literature.
To read either Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy we must find the poet's
cosmical and his theological standpoint. We have no right to be surprised
or shocked at his conceptions. We must take him as he is, and let him
lead us through the universe as he has planned it. So long as we set up
our modern views as a standard, and by this standard judge the ancient
men, we fail in hospitality of thought, and come short of our duty as
readers.
This consideration suggests yet another purpose in setting youth to the
reading of Milton. By no means an ancient poet, he takes us,
nevertheless, to a world different from our own, and in some sense helps
us out of the modern time in which our lives have fallen, to show us how
other ages conceived of God and Heaven. The mark of an educated man is
respect for the past; the old philosophies and religions do not startle
and repel him; his ancestors were once in those stages of belief; in some
stage of this vast movement of thought he and his fellows are at the
present moment. This largeness of view can be fruitfully impressed on
youth only by letting them read, under wise guidance, the older poets.
OUTLINES OF THE LIFE OF MILTON.
John Milton was born in London on the ninth of December, 1608. Queen
Elizabeth had then been dead five years, and the literature which we call
Elizabethan was still being written by the men who had begun their
careers under her reign. Spenser had died in 1599. The theatres were yet
in the enjoyment of full popularity, and the play-writers were producing
works that continued the traditions and the manner of the Elizabethan
drama. Shakespeare had still eight years to live, and at least four of
the great plays to write. Bacon's fame was already great, but the events
of eighteen years were to cloud his reputation and establish his renown.
Jonson, great as a writer of masks, was to live till he might have seen,
in Comus, how a young and scholarly puritan humanist thought that a mask
should be conceived.
Born thus in the fifth year of the first of the Stuarts, Milton lived to
witness all the vicissitudes of English politics in which that family was
involved, except the very last. He did not see the Revolution of 1688.
Surviving for fourteen years the restoration of Charles II., he died in
1674, at the age of sixty-six.
Milton's social position can be inferred from the fact that his father
was what was then called a scrivener,--that is, he kept an office in his
dwelling, and was employed to draw up contracts, wills, and other legal
documents. This occupation implied knowledge at least of the forms of the
law, though not of its history or principles. It did not imply liberal
education, though it brought its practitioner, doubtless, more or less
into contact with men of really professional standing in the science of
jurisprudence. Perhaps the elder Milton cherished a deeper conviction of
the value of classic culture than do those who simply inherit, and take
as a matter of course, the custom of devoting years to the study of
ancient languages and literatures.
Evidently the father thought he saw in his son that promise of
intellectual vigor and of sound moral stamina which justified the
innovation, in his family, of sending his boy to the university. His
preparation for college Milton got under private masters and at the
famous public school of St. Paul's, which was near his home. This
preparation consisted chiefly in exercises in Latin composition and
literature, and was both thorough and effectual. At sixteen, when he went
to college, he had already composed Latin verse, and he read and wrote
Latin with facility.
In 1625 Milton entered Christ's College, Cambridge. Here he remained as a
student seven years, or till 1632, taking in course his A.B. and A.M.
degrees, and, in spite of his studious habits and his aversion to the
rough and wayward customs of student life, winning more and more, and at
last having in full measure, the respect of his fellow-collegians. During
these years he wrote, but did not publish, in Latin or English, no less
than twenty-five pieces of verse, among them poems of no less note than
the Nativity Ode, and the Sonnet on arriving at the age of twenty-three.
The lines on Shakespeare were also composed in this period, and appeared
in print among the poems prefixed to the second Shakespeare folio in
1632.
Returning, at the close of his university course, to the paternal
residence, the poet came, not to London, but to the village of Horton, in
Buckinghamshire, where his father had taken a house in order to live in
the country. Now had to be debated the question of a profession. Hitherto
the son had seemed silently to acquiesce in the understood hope of the
family that he would devote himself to a career in the church. But during
his university years of study and observation his views had become fixed,
his mind had advanced to self-determination, and he could not remain
content with a future that seemed to hamper his intellectual freedom.
This difference between father and son was settled, apparently without
strife, by the elder man's entire yielding to the desires of the younger.
The son could not, as we can well understand if we have read even only a
little of his verse or his prose, be otherwise than strenuous, insistent,
and masterful. To his father he was of course filial and respectful, we
may imagine him even gentle; but conciliatory, yielding, the point being
a vital one, it was not in his nature to be.
What the young Milton desired was to lead a life devoted to literature,
or, more specifically, to poetry. This meant that he wished still to
study a long time, to fathom all learning in all tongues. In college he
had, besides Latin, mastered Greek, French, Italian, and Hebrew. His
conception of a poet was of a most profoundly learned man. He had become
aware of the existence of vast areas of knowledge that he had not yet
explored. Other young men turned aside without misgiving from the
ambition to know everything, and eagerly entered into useful and
lucrative professions. But Milton scorns the thought of applying learning
to the service of material gain. This is his poetical conception of his
duty as a scholar. It will dominate the spirit of his life work. To
understand his feelings at this time both toward his father and toward
his ideals, we must read the Latin poem _Ad Patrem_, of which Professor
Masson gives an English translation.
At Horton, therefore, Milton remains, still subsisting on his father's
bounty. Having come back thither at the age of twenty-three, he continues
to live at home for nearly six years, not yet practising any art by which
to earn a livelihood. Occasionally he goes, on scholarly errands, to
London, which is not far distant. He devotes himself simply to study, and
having the poetic temperament, he cannot help devoting himself also to
observation of nature. His learning becomes immense; his appetite is
insatiable.
To the Horton time belong the "minor poems" not already produced during
the student years at Cambridge. Of the circumstances in which the several
poems were written, an account is given in the Notes in this volume. This
early, or minor, verse of Milton is elicited by passing events, and is
considered to concern only himself and a few friends. For immediate fame
he takes no thought. He feels his immaturity. His ambition contemplates a
distant future, and he meditates plans, as yet undefined and vague, of
some great work that the world shall not willingly let die.
Very important in Milton's intellectual development is his journey to
France and Italy, on which he set out in April, 1638. As an indication of
his social position in England, we must note that he carries with him
letters of introduction which secure to him notice and recognition from
men of rank or of notable literary and scientific standing. He goes
abroad as a cultivated private gentleman, known to have achieved
distinction as a student. Undoubtedly his chief qualification for holding
his own in learned Italian society was his command of languages,
especially of Latin, unless indeed we are to put before his linguistic
accomplishments the refined and gentlemanly personal bearing which was
his birthright, and which, in his years of intense application to books,
he had not forfeited. In Italy he associated with men whose intellectual
interests were the universal ones of science, in which he was as much at
home as they. Thus he possessed a perfect outfit of the endowments and
the acquisitions which a traveller needs to make his travel fruitful to
himself and honorable to his country.
In Italy he made friends among men of note, and established relations
which were to have their importance in his future life. But most
memorable among his Italian experiences was his visit to the aged
Galileo, who was then a "prisoner to the Inquisition" for teaching that
the earth moves round the sun. The modern astronomy was then winning its
way among men of thought very much as the doctrine of evolution has been
winning its way during the last half century. Few minds surrendered
instantly and without misgiving to the new conception. Milton has still
many years to meditate the question before he comes to the composition of
Paradise Lost, when his scheme of the physical universe will have to
recognize the requirements of poetic art and the prevalence of ancient
beliefs regarding the origin and order of the cosmos. From the fact that
the poet puts the earth in the centre of the universe, that he adopts, in
fact, the Ptolemaic system, though he knew the Copernican, we are not
entitled to infer that he held a fixed conviction in the matter, and
that, on direct examination as to his views, he would have absolutely
professed one theory and rejected the other. The poet has all rights of
choice, and may be said to know best where to stand to take his view of
the world.
Milton remained abroad some sixteen months, and was home again in August,
1639. The Horton household was now broken up, the father going to live,
first with his younger son, Christopher, at Reading, and afterward to
spend his last years in the family of John in London, where he died in
1647.
With his removal to London in 1639 a distinct period in Milton's life
comes to an end. He has hitherto been uninterruptedly acquiring knowledge
both by studious devotion to books and by observation of human life in
foreign lands. He has read all the great literatures in ancient and
modern languages. He has felt the poetic impulse and has proved to
himself that he has at command creative power. His purpose still is to
produce a poem. But this poem of his aspirations is distinctly a great
and majestic affair, and not at all a continuation of such work as that
which he has hitherto given to his friends, and which he esteems as
prolusions of his youth.
The poetic waiting-time which Milton, now in full vigor of manhood,
prescribes for himself, he is constrained, both by inner conviction and
by external necessity, to fill with hard and earnest work. Henceforth,
for a score of years, he ceases almost entirely to write verse, and he
earns his living. He becomes a householder in London, where, as the
father had gained his livelihood by drawing up contracts and mortgages
for his fellow-citizens, the son proceeds to gain his by teaching their
boys Latin.
To the work of teaching, Milton addressed himself with intelligence and
predilection. About education he had ideas of his own which he applied in
practice and advocated in writing. His Tract on Education is a document
of importance in the history of pedagogy, and is, besides, one of those
memorable pieces of English prose which every student of literature,
whatever his professional aims, must include in his reading. He kept his
school in his own house, where he boarded some of his pupils. We could
not imagine John Milton going into a great public school, like St.
Paul's, to serve as under-teacher to one of the tyrannical head-masters
of the day. The only school befitting his absolutely convinced and
masterful spirit is one in which he reigns supreme. The great subject is
Latin, and so thoroughly is Latin taught that finally other subjects are
explained through the medium of this language. He had, himself, brought
from his school and college days very decided discontent with the methods
then in vogue. This discontent he expresses in language of peculiar
energy and even harshness. He is a true reformer.
In 1643 Milton, then thirty-five years old, married Mary Powell, a girl
of just half his own age, daughter of a royalist residing near Oxford. We
must imagine this young wife as coming to preside, somewhat in the
capacity of matron, over a family of boys held severely to their tasks of
study by a master in whom the sense of humor was almost entirely lacking,
and whose discipline was of the sternest. That she could not endure the
situation was but natural. Very soon after the wedding she went home with
the understanding that she was to make a short visit to her parents and
sisters; but she did not return for two years. Her husband summoned her,
but she would not come back. In 1645 she at last repented of her
waywardness, sought reconciliation, and was forgiven. These two years had
wrought a change in Mary Powell Milton. She was now ready to live with
her husband, and did so till her death in 1652. She left him three
daughters, the youngest of whom, Deborah, lived till 1723, and was known
to Addison and his contemporaries, from whom she received distinguished
honors.
In reading Milton we find that all the vicissitudes of his life reflect
themselves in his works, so that the political and social events in which
he is personally concerned usurp his attention, color his views, and
often become his themes. Thus he is not, like Shakespeare, a critic of
the whole of humanity, but is usually an advocate or an accuser of the
leaders in church and state and of the principles which they profess. He
is by nature a partisan. All the energy of his mind goes into
denunciation or vindication. His experience of wedded life made him an
advocate of easier divorce, and determined in him a mood which expressed
itself in writings that naturally brought upon him obloquy even from
those who held him most in honor.
It would be most interesting to know something of the daily routine of
Milton's school, to ascertain what his pupils knew and could do when he
had done with them. But we must remember that during all the years of his
teaching the great Revolution was in progress, that all men of thought
were profoundly stirred on public questions, and that Milton himself was
a politician and an eager partisan of the cause of Parliament. He did not
consider himself a teacher finally and for good. His school did not
develop into anything great or conspicuous, and never became an object of
curiosity. While yet engaged in such teaching as he found to do, he had
written the pamphlets on education and on divorce, and also the famous
one entitled Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing to the Parliament of England. This is the best worth reading of
all his prose writings. The subject of it is perfectly intelligible
still, and its English shows to perfection the qualities of the great
Miltonic style.
After the execution of Charles I., Jan. 30, 1649, it became more than
ever necessary for all thoughtful men to express their convictions. For a
people to put to death its king by judicial process was an unheard of
event. Those who considered that the Parliament had acted within the law
and could not have done otherwise with due regard to the welfare of the
nation had to convince doubting and timid citizens at home, and also, so
far as was possible, to placate critics in other nations who still
believed that the king could do no wrong; for all Europe interested
itself in this tremendous act of the English Parliament.
Within a fortnight after the death of the king, Milton published his
pamphlet on The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. This work so impressed
the parliamentary leaders as a thorough and unanswerable argument in
defence of their cause that they sought out its author, and in March
appointed him to the important post of Secretary for Foreign Tongues.
Milton's perfect command of Latin now stood him in good stead. Here was
an uncompromising puritan, fully the equal of the foreign ecclesiastics
in theology, and capable of holding his own in Latin composition with the
most famous humanists of the time. Latin was then the language of
international intercourse. Milton's duty was to translate into and from
Latin the despatches that passed between his own and foreign governments.
He also composed original treatises, some in English and some in Latin,
the most important of which continued his justification of the national
act of regicide. The importance of these writings was very great.
Milton's services to the puritan cause can to-day hardly be appreciated.
It was the constant aim of royalists at home and abroad to represent
England as having fallen under the control of ignorant fanatics, of
ambitious, barbarous, blood-thirsty men. By his very personality, his
knowledge of affairs, his familiarity with ancient and mediaeval history,
and, above all, by his fluency in Latin invective, Milton thwarted
attempts to disparage his countrymen as lawless barbarians. He helped to
maintain the good name of his country as a land of intellectual light and
of respect for ancient usage. Foreigners who attempted personal
vilification found him ready to meet them with their own weapons. The
poet of Comus now shows himself a controversialist of unbounded energy.
In 1652, shortly before the death of his wife, Milton became totally
blind. Henceforward the duties of his secretaryship had to be performed
with the aid of an amanuensis. He continued, however, to fill the office
till just before the end of the Protectorate in 1659. In November, 1656,
he married Katharine Woodcocke, who lived but till March, 1658. She left
an infant which died a month after the mother.
Milton's duties as Secretary for Foreign Tongues must have brought him,
one would think, into some sort of personal relation with Cromwell and
the other great parliamentary leaders. The poet leaves us in no doubt as
to the high esteem in which he held these men. But no gossip of the time
admits us to a glimpse of their intercourse with each other. It falls to
Milton to eulogize Cromwell; it never came in Cromwell's way to put on
record his estimate of Milton.
With the restoration of royalty in the person of Charles II., in 1660,
Milton's public activity of course ceased, and the second period of his
life comes to an end. We saw his first period devoted to preparation and
to early essays in poetry, with the distinct conception that poetry was
yet to be the great work of his life. In his second period he expresses
himself in verse but rarely and briefly, but produces controversial
prose, now in English, now in Latin. In this second period he works, as
teacher or as public secretary, for payment, supporting himself and
family. When the third period begins, he loses all employment, goes into
closest retirement, a widower with three daughters growing up from
childhood, and devotes himself to the poetry that he has always
contemplated as the object of his ambition. He has now been blind eight
years.
In view of the conspicuous part that Milton had taken in defending the
right of Parliament to bring a king to the scaffold, it is surprising
that of the Restoration he was not included in the number of those marked
out for the punishment of death. He was for some time undoubtedly in
danger. Fortunately he was overlooked, or, perhaps, was purposely
neglected as being henceforce harmless.
In February, 1663, he married his third wife Elizabeth Minshull, who
faithfully cared for him till his death in 1674.
During this last period of his life Milton composed and published his
_major_ poems,--Paradise Lost, 1667, Paradise Regained, and Samson
Agonistes, 1671. For Paradise Lost he received from his publisher five
pounds in cash, with promise of five pounds when thirteen hundred copies
should have been sold, and of two more payments, each of the same sum,
when two more editions of the same size should have been disposed of.
The last years of his life Milton appears to have spent in comparative
comfort. His three daughters had gone out to learn trades. It seems he
had given them no education. It may be they showed no desire or aptitude
for instruction. Far more probably, however, he took no interest in their
education. His ideal of womanhood, as may be gathered from numerous
passages in his poems, is as far as possible removed from the modern
conception of sexual equality as to opportunity for education and for
training to self-determination. He shared in this respect the views that
prevailed during his day in all classes of society, and he maintained
these views as a parent no less than as the poet of Paradise.
Besides the poems named above as produced during this last period of his
life, Milton published also in these years several prose works, which
have now little value except as showing the bent and occupation of his
mind. Among these may be named a small Latin Grammar, written in English,
which he had composed long before, and a History of Britain to the Norman
Conquest.
Though the immediate sale of Paradise Lost was not large, according to
our ideas, it was yet sufficient to indicate a very respectable interest
in the reading public of the day. We must remember that it appeared in
the corrupt time of the Restoration, when the prevailing literary fashion
was wholly adverse to seriousness and ideality. The age was spiritually
degenerate. Milton himself considered that he lived "an age too late."
The great poem had no royal or noble sponsors to give it vogue; yet it
made its way. By no means had all minds become frivolous. The minor poems
had been published by themselves in 1645. These had always had their
readers. The prose pamphlets of the secretary for foreign tongues were,
at least by a small class of observant persons, known to be the work of
the author of Comus and Lycidas. There were not wanting men to take a
sympathetic interest in the fate of the poet in his retirement, and to
note the appearance of Paradise Lost as a literary event.
Thus it was that Milton lived to have some slight foretaste of the honor
which two centuries have bestowed on his memory. Visitors came to see him
in his modest dwelling in an unfashionable quarter of London. Foreigners
occasionally came to satisfy their curiosity. Dryden, the chief poet who
wrote in the spirit of the Restoration, called to talk with the author of
Paradise Lost, and to suggest improvements in the form of the poem, which
he thought should be in rhyme. The recognition which the poet thus got in
his lifetime is small only in comparison with the immense fame he has won
since his death.
Milton has now become an object of the profoundest curiosity. His life
has been investigated by Professor Masson, with a minute scrutiny into
detail such as has been devoted to no other writer but Shakespeare. His
works are perpetually reprinted in all imaginable forms, whether of
cheapness or of sumptuous elegance. They are read as text-books in
schools by hosts of youth. Our beliefs regarding the great themes of the
sacred scriptures are so colored by the Miltonic epics that we hardly
know to-day just what part of our conceptions we owe to the Bible and
what to the poet. Next to the Shakespearean dramas, the poems of Milton
are the largest single influence that knits the English-speaking race
into one vast brotherhood.
All students of Milton have to acknowledge their indebtedness to
Professor David Masson of Edinburgh, who has devoted years of labor to
research in every department of Miltonic lore. Masson's great Life of
Milton in Connexion with the History of his Time is far too bulky for use
except for reference on special points. The index volume makes the
enormous Work accessible as occasion requires.
To his edition of the poetical works, Masson prefixes a life, which will
suffice for all the needs likely to arise in school. Yet again, Masson is
the writer of the article on Milton in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a
most complete presentment of everything a student ordinarily needs to
know.
In the series of Classical Writers is a little book, or primer, on
Milton, written by Stopford A. Brooke.
In the English Men of Letters series, the Milton is the work of Mark
Pattison.
The latest good account of Milton is the book entitled simply John
Milton, by Walter Raleigh, professor at University College, Liverpool.
This is a remarkably vigorous and illuminating piece of criticism.
Perhaps the most interesting writing on a Milton subject is the book by
Mrs. Anne Manning, The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell (afterward
Mrs. Milton), and the sequel thereto, Deborah's Diary. This the student
must read with the full understanding that it is a work of fiction.
It is right to warn young readers against the natural tendency to give
their time to critical and expository books and articles before they make
acquaintance with originals. Almost every essayist of note has written on
Milton. There is danger lest we accept opinions at second hand. The only
opinions on Milton to which we have any right are those we form from our
own reading of his works.
MILTON'S MINOR POEMS.
ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.
[Composed 1629.]
I.
This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing, 5
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
II.
That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heaven's high council-table 10
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside, and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
III.
Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein 15
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the Sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light, 20
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
IV.
See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odors sweet!
Oh! run; prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; 25
Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel Quire,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.
The Hymn.
I.
It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child 30
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her 35
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.
II.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame, 40
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
III.
But he, her fears to cease, 45
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; 50
And, waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
IV.
No war, or battle's sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung; 55
The hooked chariot stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by. 60
V.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began.
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kissed, 65
Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
VI.
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze, 70
Bending one way their precious influence,
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow, 75
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
VII.
And, though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame, 80
As his inferior flame
The new-enlightened world no more should need:
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axletree could bear.
VIII.
The shepherds on the lawn, 85
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below: 90
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
IX.
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook, 95
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose, 99
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.
X.
Nature, that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat the Airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done, 105
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.
XI.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light, 110
That with long beams the shamefaced Night arrayed;
The helmed cherubim
And sworded seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn quire, 115
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir.
XII.
Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
While the Creator great 120
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced World on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
XIII.
Ring out, ye crystal spheres! 125
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow; 130
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.
XIV.
For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold; 135
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. 140
XV.
Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen, 145
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.
XVI.
But wisest Fate says No,
This must not yet be so; 150
The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, 155
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep.
XVII.
With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The aged Earth, aghast 160
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world's last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
XVIII.
And then at last our bliss 165
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
The Old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway, 170
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
XIX.
The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 175
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. 180
XX.
The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring, and dale
Edged with poplar pale, 185
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
XXI.
In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth, 190
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;
In urns, and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat, 195
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.
XXII.
Peor and Baaelim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And mooned Ashtaroth, 200
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine:
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.
XXIII.
And sullen Moloch, fled, 205
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals' ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue; 210
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.
XXIV.
Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green, 214
Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud; 215
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;
In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark,
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. 220
XXV.
He feels from Juda's land
The dreaded Infant's hand;
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide, 225
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.
XXVI.
So, when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red, 230
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
And the yellow-skirted fays 235
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
XXVII.
But see! the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest.
Time is our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven's youngest-teemed star 240
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.
ON SHAKESPEARE. 1630.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 5
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 10
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make _us_ marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie 15
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
L'ALLEGRO.
Hence, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell, 5
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more, 15
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Or whether (as some sager sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying, 20
There, on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 25
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek; 30
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee 35
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free; 40
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow, 45
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin; 50
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill, 55
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great Sun begins his state, 60
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 65
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landskip round it measures: 70
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied; 75
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes. 80
Hard by a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met
Are at their savory dinner set
Of herbs and other country messes, 85
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead. 90
Sometimes, with secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid 95
Dancing in the chequered shade,
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the livelong daylight fail:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 100
With stories told of many a feat,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
She was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar's lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat 105
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend, 110
And, stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 115
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold, 120
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear 125
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream,
On summer eves by haunted stream. 130
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild,
And ever, against eating cares, 135
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out 140
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony;
That Orpheus' self may heave his head 145
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice. 150
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
IL PENSEROSO.