"Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds
As flake by flake is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round."
These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the
slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of
those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation. In
most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep.
In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen
years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest. After
two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to
consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country
might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals
of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than
Thamyris and Mæonides. Yet the material of his immortal poem must have
gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so
soon have been transmuted into song. It can hardly be doubted that his
cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life.
Remanded thus to solemn meditation, he would gradually rise to the
height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in
comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation
he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point
when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing,
as always hitherto, the impulse of others. We cannot tell what influence
finally launched this high-piled avalanche of thrice-sifted snow. The
time is better ascertained. Aubrey refers it to 1658, the last year of
Oliver's Protectorate. As Cromwell's death virtually closed Milton's
official labours, a Genie, overshadowing land and sea, arose from the
shattered vase of the Latin Secretaryship.
Nothing is more interesting than to observe the first gropings of genius
in pursuit of its aim. Ample insight, as regards Milton, is afforded by
the precious manuscripts given to Trinity College, Cambridge, by Sir
Henry Newton Puckering (we know not how he got them), and preserved by
the pious care of Charles Mason and Sir Thomas Clarke. By the portion of
the MSS. relating to Milton's drafts of projected poems, which date
about 1640-1642, we see that the form of his work was to have been
dramatic, and that, in respect of subject, the swift mind was divided
between Scripture and British History. No fewer than ninety-nine
possible themes--sixty-one Scriptural, and thirty-eight historical or
legendary--are jotted down by him. Four of these relate to "Paradise
Lost." Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are "Sodom" (the
plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently
impracticable, is interesting as a counterpart of "Comus"), "Samson
Marrying," "Ahab," "John the Baptist," "Christus Patiens," "Vortigern,"
"Alfred the Great," "Harold," "Athirco" (a very striking subject from a
Scotch legend), and "Macbeth," where Duncan's ghost was to have appeared
instead of Banquo's, and seemingly taken a share in the action.
"Arthur," so much in his mind when he wrote the "Epitaphium Damonis,"
does not appear at all. Two of the drafts of "Paradise Lost" are mere
lists of _dramatis personæ_, but the others indicate the shape which the
conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a
religious drama on the pattern of the mediæval mystery or miracle play.
Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the
second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer
bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's
temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which
Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope
for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion,
"the Angel causes to pass before his eyes a masque of all the evils of
this life and world," a conception traceable in the eleventh book of
"Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the
freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked
upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by
Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech
which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the
exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have
originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's
mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark
that his purpose had from the first been didactic. This is particularly
visible in the notes of alternative subjects in his manuscripts, many of
which palpably allude to the ecclesiastical and political incidents of
his time, while one is strikingly prophetic of his own defence of the
execution of Charles I. "The contention between the father of Zimri and
Eleazar whether he ought to have slain his son without law; next the
ambassadors of the Moabites expostulating about Cosbi, a stranger and a
noblewoman, slain by Phineas. It may be argued about reformation and
punishment illegal, and, as it were, by tumult. After all arguments
driven home, then the word of the Lord may be brought, acquitting and
approving Phineas." It was his earnest aim at all events to compose
something "doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." "Whatsoever," he says
in 1641, "whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
refluxes of man's thoughts from within--all these things with a solid
and treatable smoothness to paint out and describe; teaching over the
whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example,
with much delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper who
will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her
elegantly drest, that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear
more rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant,
they would then appear to all men easy and pleasant though they were
rugged and difficult in deed." An easier task than that of "justifying
the ways of God to man" by the cosmogony and anthropology of "Paradise
Lost."
If it is true--and the fact seems well attested--that Milton's poetical
vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to the vernal[5], he cannot
well have commenced "Paradise Lost" before the death of Cromwell, or
have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty
called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on
which he had irreconcilably differed from Cromwell was that of a State
Church; Cromwell, the practical man, perceiving its necessity, and
Milton, the idealist, seeing only its want of logic. Unfortunately, this
inconsequence existed only for the few thinkers who could in that age
rise to the acceptance of Milton's premises. In his "Treatise of Civil
Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," published in February, 1659, he
emphatically insists that the civil magistrate has neither the right nor
the power to interfere in matters of religion, and concludes: "The
defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt
not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour
might be spared and the commonwealth better tended." It is to be
regretted that he had not entered upon this great subject at an earlier
period. The little tract, addressed to the Republican members of
Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of
Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of
resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument,
in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable
in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the
following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title,
"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the
Church." The recipe is simple and efficacious--cease to hire them, and
they will cease to be hirelings. Suppress all ecclesiastical endowments,
and let the clergyman be supported by free-will offerings. The fact that
this would have consigned about half the established clergy to beggary
does not trouble him; nor were they likely to be greatly troubled by a
proposal so sublimely impracticable. Vested interests can only be
over-ridden in times of revolution, and 1659, in outward appearance a
year of anarchy, was in truth a year of reaction. For the rest, it is to
be remarked that Milton scarcely allowed the ministry to be followed as
a profession, and that his views on ecclesiastical organization had come
to coincide very nearly with those now held by the Plymouth Brethren.
There is much plausibility in Pattison's comparison of the men of the
Commonwealth disputing about matters of this sort on the eve of the
Restoration, to the Greeks of Constantinople contending about the
Azymite controversy while the Turks were breaching their walls. In fact,
however, this blindness was not confined to one party. Anthony Wood, a
Royalist, writing thirty years afterwards, speaks of the Restoration as
an event which no man expected in September, 1659. The Commonwealth was
no doubt dead as a Republic. "Pride's Purge," the execution of Charles,
and Cromwell's expulsion of the remnant of the Commons, had long ago
given it mortal wounds. It was not necessarily defunct as a
Protectorate, or a renovated Monarchy: the history of England might have
been very different if Oliver had bequeathed his power to Henry instead
of to Richard. No such vigorous hand taking the helm, and the vessel of
the State drifting more and more into anarchy, the great mass of
Englishmen, to the frustration of many generous ideals, but to the
credit of their practical good sense, pronounced for the restoration of
Charles the Second. It is impossible to think without anger and grief of
the declension which was to ensue, from Cromwell enforcing toleration
for Protestants to Charles selling himself to France for a pension, from
Blake at Tunis to the Dutch at Chatham. But the Restoration was no
national apostasy. The people as a body did not decline from Milton's
standard, for they had never attained to it; they did not accept the
turpitudes of the new government, for they did not anticipate them. So
far as sentiment inspired them, it was not love of license, but
compassion for the misfortunes of an innocent prince. Common sense,
however, had much more to do with prompting their action, and common
sense plainly informed them that they had no choice between a restored
king and a military despot. They would not have had even that if the
leading military chief had not been a man of homely sense and vulgar
aims; such an one as Milton afterwards drew in--
"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold."
In the field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier,
acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually. In his
political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of
the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot. Such are they for
whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually
find that they have laboured. "Great things," said Edward Gibbon
Wakefield, "are begun by men with great souls and little
breeches-pockets, and ended by men with great breeches-pockets and
little souls."
Milton would not have been Milton if he could have acquiesced in an ever
so needful Henry Cromwell or Charles Stuart. Never quick to detect the
course of public opinion, he was now still further disabled by his
blindness. There is great pathos in the thought of the sightless patriot
hungering for tidings, "as the Red Sea for ghosts," and swayed hither
and thither by the narratives and comments of passionate or interested
reporters. At last something occurred which none could misunderstand or
misrepresent. On February 11th, about ten at night, Mr. Samuel Pepys,
being in Cheapside, heard "all the bells in all the churches a-ringing.
But the common joy that was everywhere to be seen! The number of
bonfires, there being fourteen between St. Dunstan's and Temple Bar, and
at Strand Bridge I could at one view tell thirty-one fires. In King
Street, seven or eight; and all around burning, roasting, and drinking
for rumps. There being rumps tied upon sticks and carried up and down.
The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a merry peal with their
knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump. On Ludgate Hill
there was one turning of the spit that had a rump tied upon it, and
another basting of it. Indeed, it was past imagination, both the
greatness and the suddenness of it. At one end of the street you would
think there was a whole lane of fire, and so hot that we were fain to
keep on the further side." This burning of the Rump meant that the
attempt of a miserable minority to pose as King, Lords, and Commons, had
broken down, and that the restoration of Charles, for good or ill, was
the decree of the people. A modern Republican might without disgrace
have bowed to the gale, for such an one, unless hopelessly fanatical,
denies the divine right of republics equally with that of kings, and
allows no other title than that of the consent of the majority of
citizens. But Milton had never admitted the rights of the majority: and
in his supreme effort for the Republic, "The Ready and Easy Way to
establish a free Commonwealth," he ignores the Royalist plurality, and
assumes that the virtuous part of the nation, to whom alone he allows a
voice, is as desirous as himself of the establishment of a Republic, and
only needs to be shown the way. As this was by no means the case, the
whole pamphlet rests upon sand: though in days when public opinion was
guided not from the press but from the rostrum, many might have been won
by the eloquence of Milton's invectives against the inhuman pride and
hollow ceremonial of kingship, and his encomiums of the simple order
when the ruler's main distinction from the ruled is the severity of his
toil. "Whereas they who are the greatest are perpetual servants and
drudges to the public at their own cost and charges, neglect their own
affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; live soberly in
their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely,
familiarly, friendly without adoration." Whatever generous glow for
equality such words might kindle, was only too likely to be quenched
when the reader came to learn on what conditions Milton thought it
attainable. His panacea was a permanent Parliament or Council of State,
self-elected for life, or renewable at most only in definite
proportions, at stated times. The whole history of England for the last
twelve years was a commentary on the impotence of a Parliament that had
outlived its mandate, and every line of the lesson had been lost upon
Milton. He does indeed, near the end, betray a suspicion that the people
may object to hand over the whole business of legislation to a
self-elected and irresponsible body, and is led to make a remarkable
suggestion, prefiguring the federal constitution of the United States,
and in a measure the Home Rule and Communal agitations of our own day.
He would make every county independent in so far as regards the
execution of justice between man and man. The districts might make their
own laws in this department, subject only to a moderate amount of
control from the supreme council. This must have seemed to Milton's
contemporaries the official enthronement of anarchy, and, in fact, his
proposal, thrown off at a heat with the feverish impetuosity that
characterizes the whole pamphlet, is only valuable as an aid to
reflection. Yet, in proclaiming the superiority of healthy municipal
life to a centralized administration, he has anticipated the judgment of
the wisest publicists of our day, and shown a greater insight than was
possessed by the more scientific statesmen of the eighteenth century.
One quality of Milton's pamphlet claims the highest admiration, its
audacious courage. On the very eve of the Restoration, and with full
though tardy recognition of its probable imminence, he protests as
loudly as ever the righteousness of Charles's execution, and of the
perpetual exclusion of his family from the throne. When all was lost, it
was no disgrace to quit the field. His pamphlet appeared on March 3,
1660; a second edition, with considerable alterations, was for the time
suppressed. On March 28th the publisher was imprisoned for vending
treasonable books, among which the pamphlet was no doubt included. Every
ensuing day added something to the discomfiture of the Republicans,
until on May 1st, "the happiest May-day," says that ardent Royalist _du
lendemain_, Pepys, "that hath been many a year to England," Charles
II.'s letter was read to a Parliament that none could deny to have been
freely chosen, and acclaimed, "without so much as one No." On May 7th,
as is conjectured by the date of an assignment made to Cyriack Skinner
as security for a loan, Milton quitted his house, and concealed himself
in Bartholomew Close, Smithfield. Charles re-entered his kingdom on May
29th, and the hue and cry after regicides and their abettors began. The
King had wisely left the business to Parliament, and, when the
circumstances of the times, and the sincere horror in which good men
held what they called regicide and sacrilege are duly considered, it
must be owned that Parliament acted with humanity and moderation. Still,
in the nature of things, proscription on a small scale was inevitable.
Besides the regicides proper, twenty persons were to be named for
imprisonment and permanent incapacitation for office then, and liable to
prosecution and possibly capital punishment hereafter. It seemed almost
inevitable that Milton should be included. On June 16th his writings
against Charles I. were ordered to be burned by the hangman, which
sentence was performed on August 27th. A Government proclamation
enjoining their destruction had been issued on August 13th, and may now
be read in the King's Library at the British Museum. He had not, then,
escaped notice, and how he escaped proscription it is hard to say.
Interest was certainly made for him. Andrew Marvell, Secretary Morrice,
and Sir Thomas Clarges, Monk's brother-in-law, are named as active on
his behalf; his brother and his nephew both belonged to the Royalist
party, and there is a romantic story of Sir William Davenant having
requited a like obligation under which he lay to Milton himself. More to
his honour this than to have been the offspring of Shakespeare, but one
tale is no better authenticated than the other. The simplest explanation
is that twenty people were found more hated than Milton: it may also
have seemed invidious to persecute a blind man. It is certainly
remarkable that the authorities should have failed to find the
hiding-place of so recognizable a person, if they really looked for it.
Whether by his own adroitness or their connivance, he avoided arrest
until the amnesty resolution of August 29th restored him to the world
without even being incapacitated from office. He still had to run the
gauntlet of the Serjeant-at-Arms, who at some period unknown arrested
him as obnoxious to the resolution of June 16th, and detained him,
charging exorbitant fees, until compelled to abate his demands by the
Commons' resolution of December 15th. Milton relinquished his house in
Westminster, and formed a temporary refuge on the north side of Holborn.
His nerves were shaken; he started in his broken sleep with the
apprehension and bewilderment natural to one for whom, physically and
politically, all had become darkness.
His condition, in sooth, was one of well-nigh unmitigated misfortune,
and his bearing up against it is not more of a proof of stoic fortitude
than of innate cheerfulness. His cause lost, his ideals in the dust, his
enemies triumphant, his friends dead on the scaffold, or exiled, or
imprisoned, his name infamous, his principles execrated, his property
seriously impaired by the vicissitudes of the times. He had been
deprived of his appointment and salary as Latin Secretary, even before
the Restoration: and he was now fleeced of two thousand pounds, invested
in some kind of Government security, which was repudiated in spite of
powerful intercession. Another "great sum" is said by Phillips to have
been lost "by mismanagement and want of good advice," whether at this
precise time is uncertain. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster
reclaimed a considerable property which had passed out of their hands in
the Civil War. The Serjeant-at-Arms had no doubt made all out of his
captive that the Commons would let him. On the whole, Milton appears to
have saved about £1500 from the wreck of his fortunes, and to have
possessed about £200 income from the interest of this fund and other
sources, destined to be yet further reduced within a few years. The
value of money being then about three and a half times as great as now,
this modest income was still a fair competence for one of his frugal
habits, even when burdened with the care of three daughters. The history
of his relations with these daughters is the saddest page of his life.
"I looked that my vineyard should bring forth grapes, and it brought
forth wild grapes." If any lot on earth could have seemed enviable to an
imaginative mind and an affectionate heart, it would have been that of
an Antigone or a Romola to a Milton. Milton's daughters chose to reject
the fair repute that the simple fulfilment of evident duty would have
brought them, and to be damned to everlasting fame, not merely as
neglectful of their father, but as embittering his existence. The
shocking speech attributed to one of them is, we may hope, not a fact;
and it may not be true to the letter that they conspired to rob him, and
sold his books to the ragpickers. The course of events down to his
death, nevertheless, is sufficient evidence of the unhappiness of his
household. Writing "Samson Agonistes" in calmer days, he lets us see how
deep the iron had entered into his soul:
"I dark in light exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool
In power of others, never in my own."
He probably never understood how greatly he was himself to blame. He
had, in the first place, neglected to give his daughters the education
which might have qualified them in some measure to appreciate him. The
eldest, Anne, could not even write her name; and it is but a poor excuse
to say that, though good-looking, she was deformed, and afflicted with
an impediment in her speech. The second, Mary, who resembled her mother,
and the third, Deborah, the most like her father, were better taught;
but still not to the degree that could make them intelligent doers of
the work they had to perform for him. They were so drilled in foreign
languages, including Greek and Latin (Hebrew and Syriac are also
mentioned, but this is difficult of belief), that they could read aloud
to him without any comprehension of the meaning of the text. Sixty years
afterwards, passages of Homer and Ovid were found lingering as melodious
sounds in the memory of the youngest. Such a task, inexpressibly
delightful to affection, must have been intolerably repulsive to dislike
or indifference: we can scarcely wonder that two of these children (of
the youngest we have a better report), abhorred the father who exacted
so much and imparted so little. Yet, before visiting any of the parties
with inexorable condemnation, we should consider the strong probability
that much of the misery grew out of an antecedent state of things, for
which none of them were responsible. The infant minds of two of the
daughters, and the two chiefly named as undutiful, had been formed by
their mother. Mistress Milton cannot have greatly cherished her husband,
and what she wanted in love must have been made up in fear. She must
have abhorred his principles and his writings, and probably gave free
course to her feelings whenever she could have speech with a
sympathizer, without caring whether the girls were within hearing.
Milton himself, we know, was cheerful in congenial society, but he were
no poet if he had not been reserved with the uncongenial. To them the
silent, abstracted, often irritable, and finally sightless father would
seem awful and forbidding. It is impossible to exaggerate the
susceptibility of young minds to first impressions. The probability is
that ere Mistress Milton departed this life, she had intentionally or
unintentionally avenged all the injuries she could imagine herself to
have received from her husband, and furnished him with a stronger
argument than any that had found a place in the "Doctrine and Discipline
of Divorce."
It is something in favour of the Milton girls that they were at least
not calculating in their undutifulness. Had they reflected, they must
have seen that their behaviour was little to their interest. If they
brought a stepmother upon themselves, the blame was theirs. Something
must certainly be done to keep Milton's library from the rag-women; and
in February, 1663, by the advice of his excellent physician Dr. Paget,
he married Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of a yeoman of Wistaston in
Cheshire, a distant relation of Dr. Paget's own, and exactly thirty
years younger than Milton. "A genteel person, a peaceful and agreeable
woman," says Aubrey, who knew her, and refutes by anticipation
Richardson's anonymous informant, perhaps Deborah Clarke, who libelled
her as "a termagant." She was pretty, and had golden hair, which one
connects pleasantly with the late sunshine she brought into Milton's
life. She sang to his accompaniment on the organ and bass-viol, but is
not recorded to have read or written for him; the only direct testimony
we have of her care of him is his verbal acknowledgment of her attention
to his creature comforts. Yet Aubrey's memoranda show that she could
talk with her husband about Hobbes, and she treasured the letters he had
received from distinguished foreigners. At the time of their marriage
Milton was living in Jewin Street, Aldersgate, from which he soon
afterwards removed to Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, his last
residence. He lodged in the interim with Millington, the book
auctioneer, a man of superior ability, whom an informant of Richardson's
had often met in the streets leading his inmate by the hand.
It is at this era of Milton's history that we obtain the fullest details
of his daily life, as being nearer to the recollection of those from
whom information was sought after his death. His household was larger
than might have been expected in his reduced circumstances; he had a
man-servant, Greene, and a maid, named Fisher. That true
hero-worshipper, Aubrey, tells us that he generally rose at four, and
was even then attended by his "man" who read to him out of the Hebrew
Bible. Such erudition in a serving-man almost surpasses credibility: the
English Bible probably sufficed both. It is easier to believe that some
one read to him or wrote for him from seven till dinner time: if,
however, "the writing was nearly as much as the reading," much that
Milton dictated must have been lost. His recreations were walking in his
garden, never wanting to any of his residences, where he would continue
for three or four hours at a time; swinging in a chair when weather
prevented open-air exercise; and music, that blissful resource of
blindness. His instrument was usually the organ, the counterpart of the
stately harmony of his own verse. To these relaxations must be added the
society of faithful friends, among whom Andrew Marvell, Dr. Paget, and
Cyriack Skinner are particularly named. Nor did Edward Phillips neglect
his uncle, finding him, as Aubrey implies, "most familiar and free in
his conversation to those to whom most sour in his way of education."
Milton had made him "a songster," and we can imagine the "sober, silent,
and most harmless person" (Evelyn) opening his lips to accompany his
uncle's music. Of Milton's manner Aubrey says, "Extreme pleasant in his
conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc., but satirical." Visitors
usually came from six till eight, if at all, and the day concluded with
a light supper, sometimes of olives, which we may well imagine fraught
for him with Tuscan memories, a pipe, and a glass of water. This picture
of plain living and high thinking is confirmed by the testimony of the
Quaker Thomas Ellwood, who for a short time read to him, and who
describes the kindness of his demeanour, and the pains he took to teach
the foreign method of pronouncing Latin. Even more; "having a curious
ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and when I
did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most
difficult passages to me." Milton must have felt a special tenderness
for the Quakers, whose religious opinions, divested of the shell of
eccentricity which the vulgar have always mistaken for the kernel, had
become substantially his own. He had outgrown Independency as formerly
Presbyterianism. His blindness served to excuse his absence from public
worship; to which, so long at least as Clarendon's intolerance prevailed
in the councils of Charles the Second, might be added the difficulty of
finding edification in the pulpit, had he needed it. But these reasons,
though not imaginary, were not those which really actuated him. He had
ceased to value rites and forms of any kind, and, had his religious
views been known, he would have been "equalled in fate" with his
contemporary Spinoza. Yet he was writing a book which orthodox
Protestantism has accepted as but a little lower than the Scriptures.
"The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." We know but little
of the history of the greatest works of genius. That something more than
usual should be known of "Paradise Lost" must be ascribed to the
author's blindness, and consequent dependence upon amanuenses. When
inspiration came upon him any one at hand would be called upon to
preserve the precious verses, hence the progress of the poem was known
to many, and Phillips can speak of "parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty
verses at a time." We have already heard from him that Milton's season
of inspiration lasted from the autumnal equinox to the vernal: the
remainder of the year doubtless contributed much to the matter of his
poem, if nothing to the form. His habits of composition appear to be
shadowed forth by himself in the induction to the Third Book:--
"Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit--"
"Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note."
This is something more precise than a mere poetical allusion to his
blindness, and the inference is strengthened by the anecdote that when
"his celestial patroness" "Deigned nightly visitation unimplored," his
daughters were frequently called at night to take down the verses, not
one of which the whole world could have replaced. This was as it should
be. Grand indeed is the thought of the unequalled strain poured forth
when every other voice was hushed in the mighty city, to no meaner
accompaniment than the music of the spheres. Respecting the date of
composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced
in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered
("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible
hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks,
completed by 1663. It would still require mature revision, which we know
from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665. Internal
evidence of the chronology of the poem is very scanty. Professor Masson
thinks that the first two books were probably written before the
Restoration. In support of this view it may be urged that lines 500-505
of Book i. wear the appearance of an insertion after the Restoration,
and that in the invocation to the Third Book Milton may be thought to
allude to the dangers his life and liberty had afterwards encountered,
figured by the regions of nether darkness which he had traversed as a
poet.
"Hail holy Light!...
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne."
The only other passage important in this respect is the famous one from
the invocation to the Seventh Book, manifestly describing the poet's
condition under the Restoration:--
"Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard."
This allusion to the licentiousness of the Restoration literature could
hardly have been made until its tendencies had been plainly developed.
At this time "Paradise Lost" was half finished. ("Half yet remains
unsung.") The remark permits us to conclude that Milton conceived and
executed his poem as a whole, going steadily through it, and not leaving
gaps to be supplied at higher or lower levels of inspiration. There is
no evidence of any resort to older material, except in the case of
Satan's address to the Sun.
The publication of "Paradise Lost" was impeded like the birth of
Hercules. In 1665 London was a city of the dying and the dead; in 1666
the better part of it was laid in ashes. One remarkable incident of the
calamity was the destruction of the stocks of the booksellers, which had
been brought into the vaults of St. Paul's for safety, and perished with
the cathedral. "Paradise Lost" might have easily, like its hero--
"In the singing smoke
Uplifted spurned the ground."
but the negotiations for its publication were not complete until April
27, 1667, on which day John Milton, "in consideration of five pounds to
him now paid by Samuel Symmons, and other the considerations herein
mentioned," assigned to the said Symmons, "all that book, copy, or
manuscript of a poem intituled 'Paradise Lost,' or by whatsoever ether
title or name the same is or shall be called or distinguished, now
lately licensed to be printed." The other considerations were the
payment of the like sum of five pounds upon the entire sale of each of
the first three impressions, each impression to consist of thirteen
hundred copies. "According to the present value of money," says
Professor Masson, "it was as if Milton had received £17 10s. down, and
was to expect £70 in all. That was on the supposition of a sale of 3,900
copies." He lived to receive ten pounds altogether; and his widow in
1680 parted with all her interest in the copyright for eight pounds,
Symmons shortly afterwards reselling it for twenty-five. He is not,
therefore, to be enumerated among those publishers who have fattened
upon their authors, and when the size of the book and the
unfashionableness of the writer are considered, his enterprise may
perhaps appear the most remarkable feature of the transaction. As for
Milton, we may almost rejoice that he should have reaped no meaner
reward than immortality.
It will have been observed that in the contract with Symmons "Paradise
Lost" is said to have been "lately licensed to be printed." The
censorship named in "Areopagitica" still prevailed, with the difference
that prelates now sat in judgment upon Puritans. The Archbishop gave or
refused license through his chaplains, and could not be ignored as
Milton had ignored the little Presbyterian Popes; Geneva in his person
must repair to Lambeth. Chaplain Tomkyns, who took cognisance of
"Paradise Lost," was fortunately a broad-minded man, disposed to live
and let live, though scrupling somewhat when he found "perplexity" and
"fear of change" imputed to "monarchs." His objections were overcome,
and on August 20, 1667--three weeks after the death of Cowley, and eight
days after Pepys had heard the deceased extolled as the greatest of
English poets--John Milton came forth clad as with adamantine mail in
the approbation of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it
was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for
weighing evil against good were hung--
"Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,"
one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister.
The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other
hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with
Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity
of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move,
if not, as Milton would have wished, "a noble and puissant nation
rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and
weary nation creeping slowly--Tomkyns and all--towards an era of liberty
and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's
impertinence.