of this man. There, his picture hangs in every window; there, the
tradition of his opinions meets the traveller in every spot. “Do you
see that statue of St. George? Michael Angelo asked it why it did
not speak.”—“Do you see this fine church of Santa Maria Novella? It
is that which Michael Angelo called ‘his bride.’”—“Look at these
bronze gates of the Baptistery, with their high reliefs, cast by
Ghiberti five hundred years ago. Michael Angelo said, ‘they were fit
to be the gates of Paradise.’”—Here is the church, the palace, the
Laurentian library he built. Here is his own house. In the church of
Santa Croce are his mortal remains. Whilst he was yet alive, he asked
that he might be buried in that church, in such a spot that the dome
of the cathedral might be visible from his tomb when the doors of
the church stood open. And there and so is he laid. The innumerable
pilgrims whom the genius of Italy draws to the city, duly visit this
church, which is to Florence what Westminster Abbey is to England.
There, near the tomb of Nicholas Machiavelli, the historian and
philosopher; of Galileo, the great-hearted astronomer; of Boccaccio,
and of Alfieri, stands the monument of Michael Angelo Buonarotti.
Three significant garlands are sculptured on the tomb; they should
be four, but that his countrymen feared their own partiality. The
forehead of the bust, esteemed a faithful likeness, is furrowed with
eight deep wrinkles one above another. The traveller from a distant
continent, who gazes on that marble brow, feels that he is not a
stranger in the foreign church; for the great name of Michael Angelo
sounds hospitably in his ear. He was not a citizen of any country; he
belonged to the human race; he was a brother and a friend to all who
acknowledge the beauty that beams in universal nature, and who seek
by labor and self-denial to approach its source in perfect goodness.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Reprinted from the _North American Review_, June, 1837.
MILTON.
I framed his tongue to music,
I armed his hand with skill,
I moulded his face to beauty,
And his heart the throne of will.
[Illustration: (decorative banner)]
MILTON.[4]
The discovery of the lost work of Milton, the treatise “Of the
Christian Doctrine,” in 1823, drew a sudden attention to his name.
For a short time the literary journals were filled with disquisitions
on his genius; new editions of his works, and new compilations of
his life, were published. But the new-found book having in itself
less attraction than any other work of Milton, the curiosity of the
public as quickly subsided, and left the poet to the enjoyment of his
permanent fame, or to such increase or abatement of it only as is
incidental to a sublime genius, quite independent of the momentary
challenge of universal attention to his claims.
But if the new and temporary renown of the poet is silent again, it
is nevertheless true that he has gained, in this age, some increase
of permanent praise. The fame of a great man is not rigid and
stony like his bust. It changes with time. It needs time to give
it due perspective. It was very easy to remark an altered tone in
the criticism when Milton re-appeared as an author, fifteen years
ago, from any that had been bestowed on the same subject before.
It implied merit indisputable and illustrious; yet so near to
the modern mind as to be still alive and life-giving. The aspect
of Milton, to this generation, will be part of the history of the
nineteenth century. There is no name in English literature between
his age and ours that rises into any approach to his own. And as a
man’s fame, of course, characterizes those who give it, as much as
him who receives it, the new criticism indicated a change in the
public taste, and a change which the poet himself might claim to have
wrought.
The reputation of Milton had already undergone one or two revolutions
long anterior to its recent aspects. In his lifetime, he was little
or not at all known as a poet, but obtained great respect from
his contemporaries as an accomplished scholar and a formidable
pamphleteer. His poem fell unregarded among his countrymen. His
prose writings, especially the “Defence of the English People,”
seem to have been read with avidity. These tracts are remarkable
compositions. They are earnest, spiritual, rich with allusion,
sparkling with innumerable ornaments; but, as writings designed to
gain a practical point, they fail. They are not effective, like
similar productions of Swift and Burke; or, like what became also
controversial tracts, several masterly speeches in the history of the
American Congress. Milton seldom deigns a glance at the obstacles
that are to be overcome before that which he proposes can be done.
There is no attempt to conciliate,—no mediate, no preparatory course
suggested,—but, peremptory and impassioned, he demands, on the
instant, an ideal justice. Therein they are discriminated from modern
writings, in which a regard to the actual is all but universal.
Their rhetorical excellence must also suffer some deduction. They
have no perfectness. These writings are wonderful for the truth,
the learning, the subtilty and pomp of the language; but the whole
is sacrificed to the particular. Eager to do fit justice to each
thought, he does not subordinate it so as to project the main
argument. He writes whilst he is heated; the piece shows all the
rambles and resources of indignation, but he has never _integrated_
the parts of the argument in his mind. The reader is fatigued with
admiration, but is not yet master of the subject.
Two of his pieces may be excepted from this description, one for its
faults, the other for its excellence. The “Defence of the People
of England,” on which his contemporary fame was founded, is, when
divested of its pure Latinity, the worst of his works. Only its
general aim, and a few elevated passages, can save it. We could be
well content, if the flames to which it was condemned at Paris, at
Toulouse, and at London, had utterly consumed it. The lover of his
genius will always regret that he should not have taken counsel of
his own lofty heart at this, as at other times, and have written from
the deep convictions of love and right, which are the foundations of
civil liberty. There is little poetry or prophecy in this mean and
ribald scolding. To insult Salmasius, not to acquit England, is the
main design. What under heaven had Madame de Saumaise, or the manner
of living of Saumaise, or Salmasius, or his blunders of grammar,
or his niceties of diction, to do with the solemn question whether
Charles Stuart had been rightly slain? Though it evinces learning
and critical skill, yet, as an historical argument, it cannot be
valued with similar disquisitions of Robertson and Hallam, and
even less celebrated scholars. But, when he comes to speak of the
reason of the thing, then he always recovers himself. The voice of
the mob is silent, and Milton speaks. And the peroration, in which
he implores his countrymen to refute this adversary by their great
deeds, is in a just spirit. The other piece is his “Areopagitica,”
the discourse, addressed to the Parliament, in favor of removing
the censorship of the press; the most splendid of his prose works.
It is, as Luther said of one of Melancthon’s writings, “alive, hath
hands and feet,—and not like Erasmus’s sentences, which were made,
not grown.” The weight of the thought is equalled by the vivacity of
the expression, and it cheers as well as teaches. This tract is far
the best known and the most read of all, and is still a magazine of
reasons for the freedom of the press. It is valuable in history as an
argument addressed to a government to produce a practical end, and
plainly presupposes a very peculiar state of society.
But deeply as that peculiar state of society, in which and for which
Milton wrote, has engraved itself in the remembrance of the world,
it shares the destiny which overtakes everything local and personal
in nature; and the accidental facts on which a battle of principles
was fought have already passed, or are fast passing, into oblivion.
We have lost all interest in Milton as the redoubted disputant of a
sect; but by his own innate worth this man has steadily risen in the
world’s reverence, and occupies a more imposing place in the mind of
men at this hour than ever before.
It is the aspect which he presents to this generation, that alone
concerns us. Milton the polemic has lost his popularity long ago; and
if we skip the pages of “Paradise Lost” where “God the Father argues
like a school divine,” so did the next age to his own. But, we are
persuaded, he kindles a love and emulation in us which he did not
in foregoing generations. We think we have seen and heard criticism
upon the poems, which the bard himself would have more valued than
the recorded praise of Dryden, Addison and Johnson, because it came
nearer to the mark; was finer and closer appreciation; the praise
of intimate knowledge and delight; and, of course, more welcome to
the poet than the general and vague acknowledgment of his genius by
those able but unsympathizing critics. We think we have heard the
recitation of his verses by genius which found in them that which
itself would say; recitation which told, in the diamond sharpness of
every articulation, that now first was such perception and enjoyment
possible; the perception and enjoyment of all his varied rhythm,
and his perfect fusion of the classic and the English styles. This
is a poet’s right; for every masterpiece of art goes on for some
ages reconciling the world unto itself, and despotically fashioning
the public ear. The opposition to it, always greatest at first,
continually decreases and at last ends; and a new race grows up in
the taste and spirit of the work, with the utmost advantage for
seeing intimately its power and beauty.
But it would be great injustice to Milton to consider him as enjoying
merely a critical reputation. It is the prerogative of this great man
to stand at this hour foremost of all men in literary history, and
so (shall we not say?) of all men, in the power _to inspire_. Virtue
goes out of him into others. Leaving out of view the pretensions of
our contemporaries (always an incalculable influence), we think no
man can be named whose mind still acts on the cultivated intellect
of England and America with an energy comparable to that of Milton.
As a poet, Shakspeare undoubtedly transcends, and far surpasses him
in his popularity with foreign nations; but Shakspeare is a voice
merely; who and what he was that sang, that sings, we know not.
Milton stands erect, commanding, still visible as a man among men,
and reads the laws of the moral sentiment to the new-born race. There
is something pleasing in the affection with which we can regard a
man who died a hundred and sixty years ago in the other hemisphere,
who, in respect to personal relations, is to us as the wind, yet by
an influence purely spiritual makes us jealous for his fame as for
that of a near friend. He is identified in the mind with all select
and holy images, with the supreme interests of the human race. If
hereby we attain any more precision, we proceed to say that we think
no man in these later ages, and few men ever, possessed so great
a conception of the manly character. Better than any other he has
discharged the office of every great man, namely, to raise the idea
of Man in the minds of his contemporaries and of posterity,—to draw
after nature a life of man, exhibiting such a composition of grace,
of strength and of virtue, as poet had not described nor hero lived.
Human nature in these ages is indebted to him for its best portrait.
Many philosophers in England, France and Germany, have formerly
dedicated their study to this problem; and we think it impossible to
recall one in those countries who communicates the same vibration of
hope, of self-reverence, of piety, of delight in beauty, which the
name of Milton awakens. Lord Bacon, who has written much and with
prodigious ability on this science, shrinks and falters before the
absolute and uncourtly Puritan. Bacon’s Essays are the portrait of an
ambitious and profound calculator,—a great man of the vulgar sort. Of
the upper world of man’s being they speak few and faint words. The
man of Locke is virtuous without enthusiasm and intelligent without
poetry. Addison, Pope, Hume and Johnson, students, with very unlike
temper and success, of the same subject, cannot, taken together, make
any pretension to the amount or the quality of Milton’s inspirations.
The man of Lord Chesterfield is unworthy to touch his garment’s
hem. Franklin’s man is a frugal, inoffensive, thrifty citizen, but
savors of nothing heroic. The genius of France has not, even in her
best days, yet culminated in any one head,—not in Rousseau, not in
Pascal, not in Fénelon,—into such perception of all the attributes of
humanity as to entitle it to any rivalry in these lists. In Germany,
the greatest writers are still too recent to institute a comparison;
and yet we are tempted to say that art and not life seems to be the
end of their effort. But the idea of a purer existence than any he
saw around him, to be realized in the life and conversation of men,
inspired every act and every writing of John Milton. He defined the
object of education to be, “to fit a man to perform justly, skilfully
and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of
peace and war.” He declared that “he who would aspire to write well
hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that
is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things,
not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities,
unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all
that which is praiseworthy.” Nor is there in literature a more noble
outline of a wise external education, than that which he drew up, at
the age of thirty-six, in his Letter to Samuel Hartlib. The muscles,
the nerves and the flesh with which this skeleton is to be filled up
and covered, exist in his works and must be sought there.
For the delineation of this heroic image of man, Milton enjoyed
singular advantages. Perfections of body and of mind are attributed
to him by his biographers, that, if the anecdotes had come down
from a greater distance of time, or had not been in part furnished
or corroborated by political enemies, would lead us to suspect the
portraits were ideal, like the Cyrus of Xenophon, the Telemachus of
Fénelon, or the popular traditions of Alfred the Great.
Handsome to a proverb, he was called the lady of his college. Aubrey
says, “This harmonical and ingenuous soul dwelt in a beautiful and
well-proportioned body.” His manners and his carriage did him no
injustice. Wood, his political opponent, relates that “his deportment
was affable, his gait erect and manly, bespeaking courage and
undauntedness.” Aubrey adds a sharp trait, that “he pronounced the
letter R very hard, a certain sign of satirical genius.” He had
the senses of a Greek. His eye was quick, and he was accounted an
excellent master of his rapier. His ear for music was so acute, that
he was not only enthusiastic in his love, but a skilful performer
himself; and his voice, we are told, was delicately sweet and
harmonious. He insists that music shall make a part of a generous
education.
With these keen perceptions, he naturally received a love of nature
and a rare susceptibility to impressions from external beauty. In the
midst of London, he seems, like the creatures of the field and the
forest, to have been tuned in concord with the order of the world;
for, he believed, his poetic vein only flowed from the autumnal
to the vernal equinox; and, in his essay on Education, he doubts
whether, in the fine days of spring, any study can be accomplished by
young men. “In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm
and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to
go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven
and earth.” His sensibility to impressions from beauty needs no proof
from his history; it shines through every page. The form and the
voice of Leonora Baroni seemed to have captivated him in Rome, and to
her he addressed his Italian sonnets and Latin epigrams.
To these endowments it must be added that his address and his
conversation were worthy of his fame. His house was resorted to
by men of wit, and foreigners came to England, we are told, “to
see the Lord Protector and Mr. Milton.” In a letter to one of his
foreign correspondents, Emeric Bigot, and in reply apparently to some
compliment on his powers of conversation, he writes: “Many have been
celebrated for their compositions, whose common conversation and
intercourse have betrayed no marks of sublimity or genius. But, as
far as possible, I aim to show myself equal in thought and speech to
what I have written, if I have written anything well.”
These endowments received the benefit of a careful and happy
discipline. His father’s care, seconded by his own endeavor,
introduced him to a profound skill in all the treasures of Latin,
Greek, Hebrew and Italian tongues; and, to enlarge and enliven his
elegant learning, he was sent into Italy, where he beheld the remains
of ancient art, and the rival works of Raphael, Michael Angelo and
Correggio; where, also, he received social and academical honors
from the learned and the great. In Paris, he became acquainted
with Grotius; in Florence or Rome, with Galileo; and probably no
traveller ever entered that country of history with better right to
its hospitality, none upon whom its influences could have fallen more
congenially.
Among the advantages of his foreign travel, Milton certainly did
not count it the least that it contributed to forge and polish that
great weapon of which he acquired such extraordinary mastery,—his
power of language. His lore of foreign tongues added daily to his
consummate skill in the use of his own. He was a benefactor of the
English tongue by showing its capabilities. Very early in life he
became conscious that he had more to say to his fellow-men than they
had fit words to embody. At nineteen years, in a college exercise,
he addresses his native language, saying to it that it would be his
choice to leave trifles for a grave argument,
“Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound;
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven’s door
Look in, and see each blissful deity,
How he before the thunderous throne doth lie.”
Michael Angelo calls “him alone an artist, whose hands can execute
what his mind has conceived.” The world, no doubt, contains many
of that class of men whom Wordsworth denominates “_silent poets_,”
whose minds teem with images which they want words to clothe. But
Milton’s mind seems to have no thought or emotion which refused to be
recorded. His mastery of his native tongue was more than to use it as
well as any other; he cast it into new forms. He uttered in it things
unheard before. Not imitating but rivalling Shakspeare, he scattered,
in tones of prolonged and delicate melody, his pastoral and romantic
fancies; then, soaring into unattempted strains, he made it capable
of an unknown majesty, and bent it to express every trait of beauty,
every shade of thought; and searched the kennel and jakes as well as
the palaces of sound for the harsh discords of his polemic wrath. We
may even apply to his performance on the instrument of language, his
own description of music:
“—Notes, with many a winding bout
Of linkëd sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.”
But, whilst Milton was conscious of possessing this intellectual
voice, penetrating through ages and propelling its melodious
undulations forward through the coming world, he knew that this
mastery of language was a secondary power, and he respected the
mysterious source whence it had its spring; namely, clear conceptions
and a devoted heart. “For me,” he said, in his “Apology for
Smectymnuus,” “although I cannot say that I am utterly untrained in
those rules which best rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted with
those examples which the prime authors of eloquence have written in
any learned tongue, yet true eloquence I find to be none but the
serious and hearty love of truth; and that whose mind soever is
fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with
the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others,
when such a man would speak, his words, by what I can express, like
so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and
in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own
places.”
But, as basis or fountain of his rare physical and intellectual
accomplishments, the man Milton was just and devout. He is rightly
dear to mankind, because in him, among so many perverse and partial
men of genius,—in him humanity rights itself; the old eternal
goodness finds a home in his breast, and for once shows itself
beautiful. His gifts are subordinated to his moral sentiments. And
his virtues are so graceful that they seem rather talents than
labors. Among so many contrivances as the world has seen to make
holiness ugly, in Milton at least it was so pure a flame, that the
foremost impression his character makes is that of elegance. The
victories of the conscience in him are gained by the commanding
charm which all the severe and restrictive virtues have for him. His
virtues remind us of what Plutarch said of Timoleon’s victories, that
they resembled Homer’s verses, they ran so easy and natural. His
habits of living were austere. He was abstemious in diet, chaste,
an early riser, and industrious. He tells us, in a Latin poem, that
the lyrist may indulge in wine and in a freer life; but that he
who would write an epic to the nations, must eat beans and drink
water. Yet in his severity is no grimace or effort. He serves from
love, not from fear. He is innocent and exact, because his taste
was so pure and delicate. He acknowledges to his friend Diodati, at
the age of twenty-one, that he is enamored, if ever any was, of
moral perfection: “For, whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon
me in other respects, he has certainly inspired me, if any ever
were inspired, with a passion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres,
according to the fable, ever seek her daughter Proserpine with such
unceasing solicitude, as I have sought this τοῦ καλοῦ ἰδέαν, this
perfect model of the beautiful in all forms and appearances of
things.”
When he was charged with loose habits of living, he declares, that
“a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem
either of what I was or what I might be, and a modesty, kept me still
above those low descents of mind beneath which he must deject and
plunge himself, that can agree” to such degradation. “His mind gave
him,” he said, “that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath
of chastity, ought to be born a knight; nor needed to expect the gilt
spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, to stir him up, by
his counsel and his arm, to secure and protect” attempted innocence.