Four times has a great English poet taken up his abode in "the paradise
of exiles," and remained there until deeply imbued with the spirit of
the land. The Italian residence of Byron and Shelley, of Landor and
Browning, has infused into English literature a new element which has
mingled with its inmost essence. Milton's brief visit could not be of
equal moment. Italian letters had already done their utmost for him; and
he did not stay long enough to master the secret of Italian life. A real
enthusiasm for Italy's classical associations is indicated by his
original purpose of extending his travels to Greece, an enterprise at
that period requiring no little disdain of hardship and peril. But it
would have been an anachronism if he could have contemplated the
comprehensive and scientific scheme of self-culture by Italian
influences of every kind which, a hundred and fifty years later, was
conceived and executed by Goethe. At the time of Milton's visit Italian
letters and arts sloped midway in their descent from the Renaissance to
the hideous but humorous rococo so graphically described by Vernon Lee.
Free thought had perished along with free institutions in the preceding
century, and as a consequence, though the physical sciences still
numbered successful cultivators, originality of mind was all but
extinct. Things, nevertheless, wore a gayer aspect than of late. The
very completeness of the triumph of secular and spiritual despotism had
made them less suspicious, surly, and austere. Spanish power was visibly
decaying. The long line of _zelanti_ Popes had come to an end; and it
was thought that if the bosom of the actual incumbent could be
scrutinized, no little complacency in Swedish victories over the Faith's
defenders would be found. An atmosphere of toleration was diffusing
itself, bigotry was imperceptibly getting old-fashioned, the most
illustrious victim of the Inquisition was to be well-nigh the last. If
the noble and the serious could not be permitted, there was no ban upon
the amiable and the frivolous: never had the land been so full of petty
rhymesters, antiquarian triflers, and gregarious literati, banded to
play at authorship in academies, like the seven Swabians leagued to kill
the hare. For the rest, the Italy of Milton's day, its superstition and
its scepticism, and the sophistry that strove to make the two as one;
its monks and its bravoes; its processions and its pantomimes; its cult
of the Passion and its cult of Paganism; the opulence of its past and
the impotence of its present; will be found depicted by sympathetic
genius in the second volume of "John Inglesant."
Milton arrived in Paris about the end of April or beginning of May. Of
his short stay there it is only known that he was received with
distinction by the English Ambassador, Lord Scudamore, and owed to him
an introduction to one of the greatest men in Europe, Hugo Grotius, then
residing at Paris as envoy from Christina of Sweden. Travelling by way
of Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, he arrived about the beginning of
August at Florence; where, probably by the aid of good recommendations,
he "immediately contracted the acquaintance of many noble and learned,"
and doubtless found, with the author of "John Inglesant," that "nothing
can be more delightful than the first few days of life in Italy in the
company of polished and congenial men." The Florentine academies, he
implies answered one of the purposes of modern clubs, and enabled the
traveller to multiply one good introduction into many. He especially
mentions Gaddi, Dati, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei, Chimentelli,
and Francini, of all of whom a full account will be found in Masson. Two
of them, Dati and Francini, have linked their names with Milton's by
their encomiums on him inserted in his works. The key-note of these
surprising productions is struck by Francini when he remarks that the
heroes of England are accounted in Italy superhuman. If this is so, Dati
may be justified in comparing a young man on his first and last foreign
tour to the travelled Ulysses; and Francini in declaring that Thames
rivals Helicon in virtue of Milton's Latin poems, which alone the
panegyrist could read. Truly, as Smollett says, Italian is the language
of compliments. If ludicrous, however, the flattery is not nauseous, for
it is not wholly insincere. Amid all conventional exaggerations there is
an under-note of genuine feeling, showing that the writers really had
received a deep impression from Milton, deeper than they could well
explain or understand. The bow drawn at a venture did not miss the mark,
but it is a curious reflection that those of his performances which
would really have justified their utmost enthusiasm were hieroglyphical
to them. Such of his literary exercises as they could understand
consisted, he says, of "some trifles which I had in memory composed at
under twenty or thereabout; and other things which I had shifted, in
scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch up among them." The former
class of compositions may no doubt be partly identified with his college
declamations and Latin verses. What the "things patched up among them"
may have been is unknown. It is curious enough that his acquaintance
with the Italian literati should have been the means of preserving one
of their own compositions, the "Tina" of Antonio Malatesti, a series of
fifty sonnets on a mistress, sent to him in manuscript by the author,
with a dedication to the _illustrissimo signore et padrone
osservatissimo_. The pieces were not of a kind to be approved by the
laureate of chastity, and annoyance at the implied slur upon his morals
may account for his omission of Malatesti from the list of his Italian
acquaintance. He carried the MS. home, nevertheless, and a copy of it,
finding its way back to Italy in the eighteenth century, restored
Malatesti's fifty indiscretions to the Italian Parnassus. That his
intercourse with men of culture involved freedom of another sort we
learn from himself. "I have sate among their learned men," he says, "and
been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as
they supposed England was, while they themselves did nothing but bemoan
the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought, that
this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had
been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian." Italy
had never acquiesced in her degradation, though for a century and a half
to come she could only protest in such conventicles as those frequented
by Milton.
The very type and emblem of the free spirit of Italy, crushed but not
conquered, then inhabited Florence in the person of "the starry
Galileo," lately released from confinement at Arcetri, and allowed to
dwell in the city under such severe restraint of the Inquisition that no
Protestant should have been able to gain access to him. It may not have
been until Milton's second visit in March, 1639, when Galileo had
returned to his villa, that the English stranger stood unseen before
him. The meeting between the two great blind men of their century is one
of the most picturesque in history; it would have been more pathetic
still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in
"Paradise Lost," or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen
years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity
which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How
deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison
of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic
glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of
"Paradise Lost," of the points at issue between Ptolemy and
Copernicus:--
"Whether the sun predominant in heaven
Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun,
He from the east his flaming road begin,
Or she from west her silent course advance
With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps
On her soft axle, while she paces even,
And bears thee soft with the smooth air along."
It would be interesting to know if Milton's Florentine acquaintance
included that romantic adventurer, Robert Dudley, strange prototype of
Shelley in face and fortune, whom Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Dean
Bargrave encountered at Florence, but whom Milton does not mention. The
next stage in his pilgrimage was the Eternal City, by this time resigned
to live upon its past. The revenues of which Protestant revolt had
deprived it were compensated by the voluntary contributions of the
lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the
centres of European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid
architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was
well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser
of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a
tribe of nephews, inordinately enriched by their indulgent uncle. Milton
arrived early in October. The most vivid trace of his visit is his
presence at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, who,
"himself waiting at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd,
nay, almost laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly
most honourable manner." There he heard the singer, Leonora Baroni, to
whom he inscribed three Latin epigrams, omitted from the fifty-six
compositions in honour of her published in the following year. But we
may see her as he saw her in the frontispiece, reproduced in Ademollo's
monograph upon her. The face is full of sensibility, but not handsome.
She lived to be a great lady, and if any one spoke of her artist days
she would say, _Chi le ricercava queste memorie?_ Next to hers, the name
most entwined with Milton's Roman residence is that of Lucas Holstenius,
a librarian of the Vatican. Milton can have had little respect for a man
who had changed his religion to become the dependant of Cardinal
Barberini, but Holstenius's obliging reception of him extorted his
gratitude, expressed in an eloquent letter. Of the venerable ruins and
masterpieces of ancient and modern art which have inspired so many
immortal compositions, Milton tells us nothing, and but one allusion to
them is discoverable in his writings. The study of antiquity, as
distinguished from that of classical authors, was not yet a living
element in European culture: there is also truth in Coleridge's
observation that music always had a greater attraction for Milton than
plastic art.
After two months' stay in Rome, Milton proceeded to Naples, whence,
after two months' residence, he was recalled by tidings of the impending
troubles at home, just as he was about to extend his travels to Sicily
and Greece. The only name associated with his at Naples is that of the
Marquis Manso, then passing his seventy-ninth year with the halo of
reverence due to a veteran who fifty years ago had soothed and shielded
Tasso, and since had protected Marini. He now entertained Milton with
equal kindness, little dreaming that in return for hospitality he was
receiving immortality. Milton celebrated his desert as the friend of
poets, in a Latin poem of singular elegance, praying for a like guardian
of his own fame, in lines which should never be absent from the memory
of his biographers. He also unfolded the project which he then cherished
of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly
barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets. He is
silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare. Manso requited the eulogium with an
epigram and two richly-wrought cups, and told Milton that he would have
shown him more observance still if he could have abstained from
religious controversy. Milton had not acted on Sir Henry Wootton's
advice to him, _il volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti_. "I had made this
resolution with myself," he says, "not of my own accord to introduce
conversation about religion; but, if interrogated respecting the faith,
whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing." To this resolution he
adhered, he says, during his second two months' visit to Rome,
notwithstanding threats of Jesuit molestation, which probably were not
serious. At Florence his friends received him with no less warmth than
if they had been his countrymen, and with them he spent another two
months. His way to Venice lay through Bologna and Ferrara, and if his
sonnets in the Italian language were written in Italy, and all addressed
to the same person, it was probably at Bologna, since the lady is spoken
of as an inhabitant of "Reno's grassy vale," and the Reno is a river
between Bologna and Ferrara. But there are many difficulties in the way
of this theory, and, on the whole, it seems most reasonable to conclude
that the sonnets were composed in England, and that their
autobiographical character is at least doubtful. That nominally
inscribed to Diodati, however, would well suit Leonora Baroni. Diodati
had been buried in Blackfriars on August 27, 1638, but Milton certainly
did not learn the fact until after his visit to Naples, and possibly not
until he came to pass some time at Geneva with Diodati's uncle. He had
come to Geneva from Venice, where he had made some stay, shipping off to
England a cargo of books collected in Italy, among which were many of
"immortal notes and Tuscan air." These, we may assume, he found awaiting
him when he again set foot on his native soil, about the end of July,
1639.
Milton's conduct on his return justifies Wordsworth's commendation:--
"Thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
Full, as his notebooks of the period attest, of magnificent aspiration
for "flights above the Aonian mount," he yet quietly sat down to educate
his nephews, and lament his friend. His brother-in-law Phillips had been
dead eight years, leaving two boys, Edward and John, now about nine and
eight respectively. Mrs. Phillips's second marriage had added two
daughters to the family, and from whatever cause, it was thought best
that the education of the sons should be conducted by their uncle. So it
came to pass that "he took him a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, at
the house of one Russel, a tailor;" Christopher Milton continuing to
live with his father.
We may well believe that when the first cares of resettlement were over,
Milton found no more urgent duty than the bestowal of a funeral tribute
upon his friend Diodati. The "Epitaphium Damonis" is the finest of his
Latin poems, marvellously picturesque in expression, and inspired by
true manly grief. In Diodati he had lost perhaps the only friend whom,
in the most sacred sense of the term, he had ever possessed; lost him
when far away and unsuspicious of the already accomplished stroke; lost
him when returning to his side with aspirations to be imparted, and
intellectual treasures to be shared. _Bis ille miser qui serus amavit._
All this is expressed with earnest emotion in truth and tenderness,
surpassing "Lycidas," though void of the varied music and exquisite
felicities which could not well be present in the conventionalized idiom
of a modern Latin poet. The most pathetic passage is that in which he
contrasts the general complacency of animals in their kind with man's
dependence for sympathy on a single breast; the most biographically
interesting where he speaks of his plans for an epic on the story of
Arthur, which he seems about to undertake in earnest. But the impulses
from without which generally directed the course of this seemingly
autocratic, but really susceptible, nature, urged him in quite a
different direction: for some time yet he was to live, not make a poem.
The tidings which, arriving at Naples about Christmas, 1638, prevailed
upon Milton to abandon his projected visit to Sicily and Greece, were no
doubt those of the revolt of Scotland, and Charles's resolution to
quell it by force of arms. Ere he had yet quitted Italy, the King's
impotence had been sufficiently demonstrated, and about a month ere he
stood on English soil the royal army had "disbanded like the break-up of
a school." Milton may possibly have regretted his hasty return, but
before many months had passed it was plain that the revolution was only
beginning. Charles's ineffable infatuation brought on a second Scottish
war, ten times more ridiculously disastrous than the first, and its
result left him no alternative but the convocation (November, 1640) of
the Long Parliament, which sent Laud to the Tower and Strafford to the
block, cleared away servile judges and corrupt ministers, and made the
persecuted Puritans persecutors in their turn. Not a member of this
grave assemblage, perhaps, but would have laughed if told that not its
least memorable feat was to have prevented a young schoolmaster from
writing an epic.
Milton had by this time found the lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard
insufficient for him, and had taken a house in Aldersgate Street, beyond
the City wall, and suburban enough to allow him a garden. "This street,"
writes Howell, in 1657, "resembleth an Italian street more than any
other in London, by reason of the spaciousness and uniformity of the
buildings and straightness thereof, with the convenient distance of the
houses." He did not at this time contemplate mixing actively in
political or religious controversy.
"I looked about to see if I could get any place that would hold
myself and my books, and so I took a house of sufficient size in
the city; and there with no small delight I resumed my intermitted
studies; cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to
God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that
task."
But this was before the convocation of the Long Parliament. When it had
met,
"Perceiving that the true way to liberty followed on from these
beginnings, inasmuch also as I had so prepared myself from my
youth that, above all things, I could not be ignorant what is of
Divine and what of human right, I resolved, though I was then
meditating certain other matters, to transfer into this struggle
all my genius and all the strength of my industry."
Milton's note-books, to be referred to in another place, prove that he
did not even then cease to meditate themes for poetry, but practically
he for eighteen years ceased to be a poet.
There is no doubt something grating and unwelcome in the descent of the
scholar from regions of serene culture to fierce political and religious
broils. But to regret with Pattison that Milton should, at this crisis
of the State, have turned aside from poetry to controversy is to regret
that "Paradise Lost" should exist. Such a work could not have proceeded
from one indifferent to the public weal, and if Milton had been capable
of forgetting the citizen in the man of letters we may be sure that "a
little grain of conscience" would ere long have "made him sour." It is
sheer literary fanaticism to speak with Pattison of "the prostitution of
genius to political party." Milton is as much the idealist in his prose
as in his verse; and although in his pamphlets he sides entirely with
one of the two great parties in the State, it is not as its instrument,
but as its prophet and monitor. He himself tells us that controversy is
highly repugnant to him.
"I trust to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure
to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a
calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident
thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse
disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in
the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come in to the
dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk."
But he felt that if he allowed such motives to prevail with him, it
would be said to him:
"Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now again at the
foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest, What matters it
for thee or thy bewailing? When time was, thou would'st not find a
syllable of all that thou hast read or studied to utter on her
behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee for thy retired
thoughts, but of the sweat of other men. Thou hast the diligence,
the parts, the language of a man, if a vain subject were to be
adorned or beautified; but when the cause of God and His Church
was to be pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given thee
which thou hast, God listened if He could hear thy voice among His
zealous servants, but thou wert dumb as a beast; from henceforward
be that which thine own brutish silence hath made thee."
A man with "Paradise Lost" in him must needs so think and act, and, much
as it would have been to have had another "Comus" or "Lycidas," were not
even such well exchanged for a hymn like this, the high-water mark of
English impassioned prose ere Milton's mantle fell upon Ruskin?
"Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable.
Parent of angels and men! next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King,
Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume,
ineffable and everlasting Love! And Thou, the third subsistence of
Divine Infinitude, illuminating Spirit, the joy and solace of
created things! one Tri-personal godhead! look upon this Thy poor
and almost spent and expiring Church, leave her not thus a prey to
these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till they
devour Thy tender flock; these wild boars that have broke into Thy
vineyard, and left the print of their polluting hoofs on the souls
of Thy servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs
that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting
the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and
scorpions to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal
darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth
again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird
of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this
our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under her throes, and
struggling against the grudges of more dreaded calamities.
"O Thou, that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody
inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking
the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless
revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were
quite breathless of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of
covenant with us; and, having first well-nigh freed us from
anti-Christian thraldom, didst build up this Britannic Empire to a
glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about
her; stay us in this felicity, let not the obstinacy of our
half-obedience and will-worship bring forth that viper of
sedition, that for these fourscore years hath been breeding to eat
through the entrails of our peace; but let her cast her abortive
spawn without the danger of this travailing and throbbing kingdom:
that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings, how, for
us, the northern ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered
with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw
of Hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction,
ere she could vent it in that horrible and damned blast.
"O how much more glorious will those former deliverances appear,
when we shall know them not only to have saved us from greatest
miseries past, but to have reserved us for greatest happiness to
come? Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from
the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes, now unite us entirely
and appropriate us to Thyself, tie us everlastingly in willing
homage to the prerogative of Thy eternal throne.
"And now we know, O Thou, our most certain hope and defence, that
Thine enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the great
whore, and have joined their plots with that sad, intelligencing
tyrant that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, and lies
thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our seas:
but let them all take counsel together, and let it come to nought;
let them decree, and do Thou cancel it; let them gather
themselves, and be scattered; let them embattle themselves, and be
broken; let them embattle, and be broken, for Thou art with us.
"Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may
perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty
measures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous
judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and
warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual
practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the
rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy
emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian
people at that day, when Thou, the Eternal and shortly-expected
King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the
world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious
and just commonwealths, shall put an end to all earthly tyrannies,
proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and
earth; where they undoubtedly, that by their labours, counsels,
and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion,
and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the
blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and
thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of
beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle
of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in
over-measure for ever.
"But they contrary, that by the impairing and diminution of the
true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire
to high dignity, rule and promotion here, after a shameful end in
this life (which God grant them), shall be thrown down eternally
into the darkest and deepest gulf of Hell, where, under the
despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned,
that in the anguish of their torture, shall have no other ease
than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their
slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the
basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and
down-trodden vassals of perdition."
The five pamphlets in which Milton enunciated his views on Church
Government fall into two well-marked chronological divisions. Three--"Of
Reformation touching Church Discipline in England," "Of Prelatical
Episcopacy," "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against
Smectymnuus"--which appeared almost simultaneously, belong to the
middle of 1641, when the question of episcopacy was fiercely agitated.
Two--"The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy," and "The
Apology for Smectymnuus,"[1] belong to the early part of 1642, when the
bishops had just been excluded from the House of Lords. To be just to
Milton we must put ourselves in his position. At the present day forms
of church government are usually debated on the ground of expediency,
and even those to whom they seem important cannot regard them as they
were regarded by Milton's contemporaries. Many may protest against
Episcopacy receiving especial recognition from the State, but no one
dreams of abolishing it, or of endowing another form of ecclesiastical
administration in its room. It is no longer contended that the national
religion should be changed, the contention is that no religion should be
national, but that all should be placed on an impartial footing. But
Milton at this time desired a theocracy, and nothing doubted that he
could produce a pattern agreeable in every respect to the Divine will if
only Prelacy could be hurled after Popery. The controversy, therefore,
assumed far grander proportions than would be possible in our day, when
it is three-fourths a protest against the airs of superiority which the
alleged successors of the Apostles think it becoming to assume towards
teachers whose education and circumstances approach more closely than
their own to the Apostolic model. What would seem exaggerated now was
then perfectly in place. Milton, in his own estimation, had a theme for
which the cloven tongues of Pentecost were none too fiery, or the
tongues of angels too melodious. As bursts of impassioned prose-poetry
the finest passages in these writings have never been surpassed, nor
ever will be equalled so long as short sentences prevail, and the
interminable period must not unfold itself in heights and hollows like
the incoming tide of ocean, nor peal forth melodious thunder like a
mighty organ. But, considered as argumentative compositions, they are
exceedingly weak. No masculine head could be affected by them; but a
manly heart may easily imbibe the generous contagion of their noble
enthusiastic idealism. No man with a single fibre of ideality or
enthusiasm can help confessing that Milton has risen to a transcendent
height, and he may imagine that it has been attained by the ladder of
reason rather than the pinion of poetry. Such an one may easily find
reasons for agreeing with Milton in many inspired outbursts of eloquence
simulating the logic that is in fact lacking to them. The following
splendid passage, for instance, and there are very many like it, merely
proves that a seat in the House of Lords is not essential to the
episcopal office, which no one ever denied. It would have considerable
force if the question involved the nineteenth century one of the Pope's
temporal sovereignty:--
"Certainly there is no employment more honourable, more worthy to
take up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free
nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of heavenly truth
from God to man, and by the faithful work of holy doctrine to
procreate a number of faithful men, making a kind of creation like
to God's by infusing his spirit and likeness into them, to their
salvation, as God did into him; arising to what climate soever he
turn him, like that Sun of Righteousness that sent him, with
healing in his wings, and new light to break in upon the chill and
gloomy hearts of his hearers, raising out of darksome barrenness a
delicious and fragrant spring of saving knowledge and good works.
Can a man thus employed find himself discontented or dishonoured
for want of admittance to have a pragmatical voice at sessions and
jail deliveries? or because he may not as a judge sit out the
wrangling noise of litigious courts to shrive the purses of
unconfessing and unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be
discouraged though men call him not lord, whereas the due
performance of his office would gain him, even from lords and
princes, the voluntary title of father?"
When it was said of Robespierre, _cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit
tout ce qu'il dit_, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief
place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal
sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity
to family life, to the horror of many nominal allies. His treatise on
Divorce was the next of his publications in chronological order, but is
so entwined with his domestic life that it will be best to postpone it
until we again take up the thread of his personal history, and to pass
on for the present to his next considerable writings, his tracts on
education and on the freedom of the press.
Milton's tract on Education, like so many of his performances, was the
fruit of an impulse from without. "Though it be one of the greatest and
noblest designs that can be thought on, and for want of which this
nation perishes, I had not at this time been induced but by your earnest
entreaties and serious conjurements." The efficient cause thus referred
to existed in the person of Samuel Hartlib, philanthropist and
polypragmatist, precursor of the Franklins and Rumfords of the
succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction,
Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country
behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour
applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal
hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather
however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by
any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings to
which he devoted himself were two of no less moment than the union of
British and foreign Protestants, and the reform of English education by
the introduction of the methods of Comenius. This Moravian pastor, the
Pestalozzi of his age, had first of men grasped the idea that the
ordinary school methods were better adapted to instil a knowledge of
words than a knowledge of things. He was, in a word, the inventor of
object lessons. He also strove to organize education as a connected
whole from the infant school to the last touch of polish from foreign
travel. Milton alludes almost scornfully to Comenius in his preface to
Hartlib, but his tract is nevertheless imbued with the Moravian's
principles. His aim, like Comenius's, is to provide for the instruction
of all, "before the years of puberty, in all things belonging to the
present and future life." His view is as strictly utilitarian as
Comenius's. "Language is but the instrument conveying to us things
useful to be known." Of the study of language as intellectual discipline
he says nothing, and his whole course of instruction is governed by the
desire of imparting useful knowledge. Whatever we may think of the
system of teaching which in our day allows a youth to leave school
disgracefully ignorant of physical and political geography, of history
and foreign languages, it cannot be denied that Milton goes into the
opposite extreme, and would overload the young mind with more
information than it could possibly digest. His scheme is further
vitiated by a fault which we should not have looked for in him,
indiscriminate reverence for the classical writers, extending to
subjects in which they were but children compared with the moderns. It
moves something more than a smile to find ingenuous youth referred to
Pliny and Solinus for instruction in physical science; and one wonders
what the agricultural Hartlib thought of the proposed course of "Cato,
Varro, and Columella," whose precepts are adapted for the climate of
Italy. Another error, obvious to any dunce, was concealed from Milton by
his own intellectual greatness. He legislates for a college of Miltons.
He never suspects that the course he is prescribing would be beyond the
abilities of nine hundred and ninety-nine scholars in a thousand, and
that the thousandth would die of it. If a difficulty occurs he
contemptuously puts it aside. He has not provided for Italian, but can
it not "be easily learned at any odd hour"? "Ere this time the Hebrew
tongue" (of which we have not hitherto heard a syllable), "might have
been gained, whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldee and
the Syrian dialect." This sublime confidence in the resources of the
human intellect is grand, but it marks out Milton as an idealist, whose
mission it was rather to animate mankind by the greatness of his
thoughts than to devise practical schemes for human improvement. As an
ode or poem on education, Milton's tract, doubtless, has delivered many
a teacher and scholar from bondage to routine; and no man's aims are so
high or his thoughts so generous that he might not be further profited
and stimulated by reading it. As a practical treatise it is only
valuable for its emphatic denunciation of the folly of teasing youth,
whose element is the concrete, with grammatical abstractions, and the
advice to proceed to translation as soon as possible, and to keep it up
steadily throughout the whole course. Neglect of this precept is the
principal reason why so many youths not wanting in capacity, and
assiduously taught, leave school with hardly any knowledge of
languages. Milton's scheme is also remarkable for its bold dealing with
day schools and universities, which it would have entirely superseded.
The next publication of Milton's is another instance of the dependence
of his intellectual workings upon the course of events outside him. We
owe the "Areopagitica," not to the lonely overflowings of his soul, or
even to the disinterested observation of public affairs, but to the real
jeopardy he had incurred by his neglect to get his books licensed. The
Long Parliament had found itself, in 1643, with respect to the Press,
very much in the position of Lord Canning's government in India at the
time of the Mutiny. It marks the progress of public opinion that,
whereas the Indian Government only ventured to take power to prevent
inopportune publication with many apologies, and as a temporary measure,
the Parliament assumed it as self-evident that "forged, scandalous,
seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books" had
no right to exist, and should be nipped in the bud by the appointment of
licensers. Twelve London ministers, therefore, were nominated to license
books in divinity, which was equivalent to enacting that nothing
contrary to Presbyterian orthodoxy should be published in England.[2]
Other departments, not forgetting poetry and fiction, were similarly
provided for. The ordinance is dated June 14, 1643. Milton had always
contemned the licensing regulations previously existing, and within a
month his brain was busy with speculations which no reverend licenser
could have been expected to confirm with an imprimatur. About August 1st
the "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" appeared, with no recognition
of or from a licenser; and the second edition, published in the
following February, equally infringed the Parliamentary ordinance. No
notice appears to have been taken until the election of a new Master of
the Stationers' Company, about the middle of 1644. The Company had an
interest in the enforcement of the ordinance, which was aimed at piracy
as well as sedition and heresy; and whether for this reason, or at the
instigation of Milton's adversaries, they (August 24th) petitioned
Parliament to call him to account. The matter was referred to a
committee, but more urgent business thrust it out of sight. Milton,
nevertheless, had received his marching orders, and on November 24,
1644, appeared "Areopagitica; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing": itself unlicensed.
The "Areopagitica" is by far the best known of Milton's prose writings,
being the only one whose topic is not obsolete. It is also composed with
more care and art than the others. Elsewhere he seeks to overwhelm, but
here to persuade. He could without insincerity profess veneration for
the Lords and Commons to whom his discourse is addressed, and he spares
no pains to give them a favourable opinion both of his dutifulness and
his reasonableness. More than anywhere else he affects the character of
a practical man, pressing home arguments addressed to the understanding
rather than to the pure reason. He points out sensibly, and for him
calmly, that the censorship is a Papal invention, contrary to the
precedents of antiquity; that while it cannot prevent the circulation of
bad books, it is a grievous hindrance to good ones; that it destroys the
sense of independence and responsibility essential to a manly and
fruitful literature. We hear less than might have been expected about
first principles, of the sacredness of conscience, of the obligation on
every man to manifest the truth as it is within him. He does not dispute
that the magistrate may suppress opinions esteemed dangerous to society
after they have been published; what he maintains is that publication
must not be prevented by a board of licensers. He strikes at the censor,
not at the Attorney-General. This judicious caution cramped Milton's
eloquence; for while the "Areopagitica" is the best example he has given
us of his ability as an advocate, the diction is less magnificent than
usual. Yet nothing penned by him in prose is better known than the
passage beginning, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant
nation;" and none of his writings contain so many seminal sentences,
pithy embodiments of vital truths. "Revolutions of ages do not oft
recover the loss of a rejected truth." "A dram of well-doing should be
preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil
doing. For God more esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
person than the restraint of ten vicious." "Opinion in good men is but
knowledge in the making." "A man maybe a heretic in the truth." Towards
the end the argument takes a wider sweep, and Milton, again the poet and
the seer, hails with exultation the approach of the time he thinks he
discerns when all the Lord's people shall be prophets. "Behold now this
vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed
and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more
anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of
armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and
heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching,
revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their
homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation." He clearly
indicates that he regards the licensing ordinance as not really the
offspring of an honest though mistaken concern for religion and
morality, but as a device of Presbyterianism to restrain this outpouring
of the spirit and silence Independents as well as Royalists.
Presbyterianism had indeed been weighed in the balance and found
wanting, and Milton's pamphlet was the handwriting on the wall. The fine
gold must have become very dim ere a Puritan pen could bring itself to
indite that scathing satire on the "factor to whose care and credit the
wealthy man may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some
divine of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres; resigns
the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys into
his custody; and, indeed, makes the very person of that man his
religion--esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and
commendation of his own piety. So that a man may say his religion is now
no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and
comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He
entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him, his religion
comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped and sumptuously laid to
sleep, rises, is saluted; and after the malmsey or some well-spiced
brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would
have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his
religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the
shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling
passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless,
congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was
humour. And now, surely as ever Saul was among the prophets, behold
Milton among the wits.