EFFECTS OF MILTON'S _AREOPAGITICA_--HIS INTENTION OF ANOTHER
MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH HIM--REMOVAL FROM
ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN--FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS:
HUMPHREY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER--TWO DIVORCE SONNETS AND SONNET TO HENRY
LAWES--CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIAN
SONNET OF REPLY--SURRENDER OF OXFORD: CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY--THE
POWELLS IN LONDON: MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIRTH OF MILTON'S FIRST
CHILD.
The effect of Milton's _Areopagitica_, immediately after its
publication in November 1644, and throughout the year 1645, seems to have
been very considerable. Parliament, indeed, took no formal notice of the
eloquent pleading for a repeal of their Licensing Ordinance of June 1643.
As a body, they were not ripe for the discussion of the question of a
Free Press, and the Ordinance remained in force, at least as an
instrument which might be applied in cases of flagrant transgression. But
public opinion was affected, and the general agitation for Toleration
took more and more the precise and practical form into which Milton's
treatise had directed it: viz. an impatience of the censorship, and a
demand for the liberty of free philosophising and free printing. "Such
was the effect of our author's _Areopagitica_," says Toland, in his
sketch of Milton's life, "that the following year Mabol, a licenser,
offered reasons against licensing, and, at his own request, was
discharged that office." [Footnote: Toland's Memoir of Milton prefixed to
the Amsterdam (1698) edition of Milton's Prose Works, p. 23.] Toland is
in a slight mistake here, at least in his dating. The person whom he
means--Gilbert Mabbott, _not_ 'Mabol'--was Rushworth's deputy in the
office of Clerk to the House of Commons, doing duty for him while he was
away with the New Model as Secretary to Fairfax: and not only did this
Mabbott occasionally license pamphlets and newspapers, as it would have
been Rushworth's part to do, through the year 1645, but he was expressly
recommended to be licenser of "weekly pamphlets" or newspapers, Sept. 30,
1647, and he continued to act in this capacity till May 22, 1649, at
which time it was, and not in 1645, that he was released from the
business at his own request.[Footnote: My notes from the Stationers'
Registers of 1645 and subsequent years; Lords Journals, Sept. 30, 1647;
and Commons Journals, May 22, 1649. There is some evidence, however,
that, before this last date, Mabbott had found the duty irksome (see
Commons Journals, Aug. 31, 1648).] The effect of Milton's argument on
Mabbott in particular, therefore, was not so immediate as Toland
represents. There can be no doubt, however, that as Milton, in his
_Areopagitica_, had tried to make the official licensers of books,
and especially those of them who were ministers, ashamed of their office,
so his reasons and sarcasms, conjoined with the irksomeness of the office
itself, did produce an immediate effect among those gentlemen, and modify
their official conduct. Several of them, among whom appears to have been
Mr. John Downham, who had licensed Milton's own Bucer Tract (_antè_,
p. 255, note), became more lax in their censorship than the Presbyterians
thought right; and there was at least one of them, Mr. John Bachiler, who
became so very lax, from personal proclivity to Independency, that he was
denounced by the Presbyterians as "the licenser-general not only of Books
of Independent Doctrine, but of Books for a general Toleration of all
Sects, and against Pædo-Baptism." [Footnote: _Gangræna_: Part I.
(ed. 1646), pp. 38, 39. In Part III. Edwards devotes three pages (102--
105) to a castigation of Mr. Bachiler for his offences as a licenser.
Bachiler, he says, "hath been a man-midwife to bring forth more monsters
begotten by the Devil and born of the Sectaries within the last three
years than ever were brought into the light in England by all the former
licensers, the Bishops and their Chaplains, for fourscore years." He was
in the habit, Edwards adds, of not only licensing sectarian books, but
also recommending them; and among the Toleration pamphlets he had
licensed was the reprint of Leonard Busher's tract of 1614 called
_Religious Peace_ (see _antè_, p. 102). "I am afraid," says Edwards,
"that, if the Devil himself should make a book and give it the title _A
Plea for Liberty of Conscience, with certain Reasons against Persecution
for Religion_, and bring it to Mr. Bachiler, he would license it, and not
only with a bare _imprimatur_, but set before it the commendations of 'a
useful treatise' or 'a sweet and excellent book.'"] The _Areopagitica_,
in fact, found out, even among the official licensers of books, men who
sympathised with its views; and it established prominently, as one of the
practical questions between the Independents and the Presbyterians, the
question of the liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It was Milton that had
taught the Independents, and the Anti-Presbyterians generally, to bring
to the front, for present purposes, this form of the Toleration tenet.
For example, one finds that John Lilburne had been a reader of the
_Areopagitica_, and had imbibed its lesson, and even its phraseology. "If
you had not been men that had been afraid of your cause," is one of
Lilburne's addresses to the Presbyterians and the Westminster Assembly
Divines, "you would have been willing to have fought with us upon even
ground and equal terms--namely, that the Press might be as open for us
as for you, and as it was at the beginning of this Parliament; which I
conceive the Parliament did of purpose, that so the free-born English
subjects might enjoy their Liberty and Privilege, which the Bishops had
learnt of the Spanish Inquisition to rob them of, by locking it up under
the key of an _Imprimatur_." [Footnote: Lilburne, as quoted by Prynne in
his _Fresh Discovery of Blazing Stars_, p. 8.] There is proof, in the
writings of other Independents and Sectaries, that Milton's jocular
specimens of the _imprimaturs_ in old books had taken hold of the popular
fancy. It became a common form of jest, indeed, in putting forth an
unlicensed pamphlet, to prefix to it a mock licence. Thus, at the
beginning of the anonymous _Arraignment of Persecution_, the author of
which was a Henry Robinson (_antè_, p. 387), there is a mock order by the
Westminster Assembly, with the names of the two Scribes appended, to the
effect that the author, "Young Martin Mar-Priest," be thanked for his
excellent treatise, and authorized to publish it, and that no one except
"Martin Claw-Clergy," appointed by the author to print the same, presume
to do so. [Footnote: Quoted by Prynne in his _Fresh Discovery_, p. 8.]
Prynne quotes this as an example of the contempt into which the Ordinance
for Licensing had fallen with the Sectaries, and of their supreme
effrontery, Robinson, he says, was one of the chief publishers of
scandalous libels, having brought printers from Amsterdam, and set up a
private printing press for the purpose. [Footnote: I may take this
opportunity of announcing a rather curious fact, of which I have ample
and incontestable proof, thought the proper place for stating it in
detail is yet to come. It is that Milton, the denouncer of the Licensing
System, and the satirist of the official licensers of 1644, was himself
afterwards an official censor of the Press. He was one of the licensers
of newspapers through 1651 and a portion of 1652, doing the very work
from which Mabbott had begged to be excused. The fact, however, is
susceptible of an easy explanation, which will save Milton's
consistency.]
On the whole, then, Milton's position among his countrymen from the
beginning of 1645 onwards may be defined most accurately by conceiving
him to have been, in the special field of letters, or pamphleteering,
very much what Cromwell was in the broader and harder field of Army
action, and what the younger Vane was, in Cromwell's absence, in the
House of Commons. While Cromwell was away in the Army, or occasionally
when he appeared in the House and his presence was felt there in some new
Independent motion, or some arrest of a Presbyterian motion, there was no
man, outside of Parliament, who observed him more sympathetically than
Milton, or would have been more ready to second him with tongue or with
pen. Both were ranked among the Independents, as Vane also was; but this
was less because they were partisans of any particular form of Church-
government, than because they were agreed that, whatever form of Church-
government should be established, there must be the largest possible
liberty under it for nonconforming consciences. If this was Independency,
it was a kind of large lay Independency; and of Independency in this
sense Milton was, undoubtedly, the literary chief. Only, when he was
thought of by the Independents as one of their champions, it was always
with a recollection that his championship of the common cause was
qualified by a peculiar private crotchet. He figured in the list of the
chiefs of Independency, if I may so express it, with an asterisk prefixed
to his name. That asterisk was his Divorce Doctrine. He was an
Independent with the added peculiarity of being the head of the Sect of
Miltonists or Divorcers.
INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH
HIM.
In 1645 Milton still gloried in the asterisk. All the copies of the
second and augmented edition of _The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce_ having been sold, there was a reprint of it in this year,
forming substantially the third edition of the original treatise. None of
his writings hitherto had been in such popular demand; and as, besides
the three editions of the original Divorce treatise, there were also in
circulation his _Bucer Tract_, his _Tetrachordon_, and his
_Colasterion_, he had identified himself with the Divorce subject by
a total mass of writing larger than he had yet devoted to any other.
While his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, of 1641-42, make together 326
pages of his prose works in Pickering's edition, the four Divorce
treatises, of 1643-45, make 378 pages of the same; so that, in mere
quantity, Milton was 52 pages more a Divorcer than an Anti-Prelatist. He
had now, however, as he had announced in his dedication of the
_Tetrachordon_ to Parliament, done all that he meant to do on the
subject through the medium of mere pamphleteering. But he had hinted to
Parliament, while making that announcement, that a man with his opinions
might do more than write pamphlets in their behalf. "If the Law make not
a timely provision," he had said, "let the Law, as reason is, bear the
censure of the consequences." There was a covert threat here that Milton,
if the Law would not allow him to marry again, might marry again in
defiance of the Law.
Early in 1645, at all events, Milton did think of marrying again. His
wife had been away from him for the better part of two years; and she was
now nothing more in his memory than a girl who had been in his house in
Aldersgate Street as his bride for a few weeks, whom he had found out in
that short experience to be stupid and uncompanionable, who had then left
him on some pretence, and gone back to her father's house, and whose only
communications with him since had been a message or two of contempt and
insult. Law or no law, it was all over between him and that girl! All the
circumstances where known: his unfortunate position was the talk of
neighbours; often, as we have imagined, kindly souls of women, young and
older, must have had their colloquies and whispers about his pitiable
bachelorhood caused by the shameful desertion of his wife. Kindly talk
was all very well: but was there any unmarried lady willing to take the
place of the deserter, if asked to do so? This was really the question in
Aldergate Street, and in all the round of Milton's acquaintances.
Candidates were not likely to be numerous, even among those freer
Christian opinionists among whom Milton principally moved; and there was,
moreover, a complication in the general difficulty. Milton, having
blundered in his choice once, and having principled himself now with very
high notions of feminine fitness, was very likely to be careful in a
second choice. Was there accessible any lady in whom the two
indispensable conditions of fitness and willingness could be found
united? This was the problem for Milton, and it is on record that he
tried to solve it. One remembers his sonnet "_To a Virtuous Young
Lady_," written about the same time as that to the Lady Margaret Ley,
and wonders whether the "virgin wise and pure" there commemorated for her
excellencies of mind and character was thought of by him as the possible
successor of Mary Powell. Can her name have been Miss Davis? That, at all
events, was the name of the lady who _was_ thought of as Mary Powell's
probable successor. It is from Phillips that we have the particulars of
the story:--
"Not very long after the setting forth of these treatises," says
Phillips, referring to the Divorce Treatises, "having application made to
him by several gentlemen of his acquaintance for the education of their
sons, as understanding haply the progress he had infixed by his first
undertakings of that nature, he laid out for a larger house, and soon
found it out. But, in the interim, before he removed, there fell out a
passage which, though it altered not the whole course he was going to
steer, yet it put a stop, or rather an end, to a grand affair, which was
more than probably thought to be then in agitation: it was indeed a
design of marrying one of Dr. Davis's daughters, a very handsome and
witty gentlewoman, but averse, as it is said, to this motion. However,
the intelligence hereof, and the then declining state of the King's
cause, and consequently of the circumstances of Justice Powell's family,
caused them to set all engines on work to restore the late married woman
to the station wherein they a little before had planted her. At last this
device was pitched upon:--There dwelt in the Lane of St. Martin's-le-
Grand, which was hard by, a relation of our author's, one Blackborough,
whom it was known he often visited; and upon this occasion the visits
were the more narrowly observed, and possibly there might be a
combination between both parties, the friends on both sides concentring
in the same action, though on different behalfs. One time above the rest,
he making his usual visit, the wife was ready in another room, and on a
sudden he was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen
more, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him. He
might probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; but
partly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to
perseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the strong intercession of
friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm
league of peace for the future; and it was at length concluded that she
should remain at a friend's house, till such time as he was settled in
his new house at Barbican, and all things for her reception in order. The
place agreed on for her present abode was the Widow Webber's house in St.
Clement's Churchyard, whose second daughter had been married to the other
brother [Christopher Milton] many years before."
Phillips tells the story very clearly, and a little annotation is all
that is wanted:--The lady whom Milton thought of, and had perhaps been
thinking of for some time, as a possible substitute for Mary Powell, was
"one of Dr. Davis's daughters." Who this Dr. Davis was, Phillips, writing
at a time when the mere name was probably enough for Londoners, does not
inform us; nor have I been able, with any certainty, to identify him.
[Footnote: There had been a Thomas Davies, M.D., born about 1564, and
educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had graduated in
medicine in 1591, and who was afterwards a medical practitioner in
London, and Licentiate and Censor of the Royal College of Physicians
there. As he had died in 1615, the youngest of any surviving daughters of
his in 1645 must have been past her thirtieth year. But, on the whole,
Phillips's words suggest that the Dr. Davis he means was alive in 1645 or
had recently been alive; so that this is not likely to have been the one.
There was a Nicholas Davis, or Davys, M.D., who had taken that degree at
Leyden in 1638, had been incorporated in the same degree at Oxford in
1642, and may have been afterwards in practice in London (Munk's Roll of
the Royal College of Physicians of London, and Wood's Fasti, II. 9). The
date of his graduation at Leyden, however, seems rather late for the
hypothesis that he was Phillips's Dr. Davis. After all, there may have
been some other conspicuous Dr. Davis among Milton's acquaintances, and
he need not have been a medical doctor.] Dr. Davis, at all events, dead
or living, had daughters, one of them "a very handsome and witty
gentlewoman," between whom and Milton there was some attempt to arrange a
marriage. She herself, however, was naturally "averse to this motion;"
and, indeed, one can hardly understand what kind of proposition could
have been made to her or her friends. That something was in agitation,
nevertheless, and that it was talked of more particularly in the spring
and early summer of 1645, Phillips had a positive recollection, more by
token because at that very time, he also remembered, his uncle had offers
of more pupils than he could accommodate in the house in Aldersgate
Street. He had consequently been looking about for a larger house, and
had found one suitable close at hand, in the street called Barbican.
Was Miss Davis to be persuaded to be mistress of this new house? Would
the "several gentlemen" of Milton's acquaintance who meant to board or
half-board their sons with him, or would the spouses of those gentlemen,
have been satisfied with that arrangement? The experiment was not to be
tried. The house in Barbican had been taken, but Milton had not yet
removed into it, when, to Miss Davis's relief, another arrangement was
brought about.
Rumours of what was going on, and of the new house in Barbican, had been
borne to Oxford, and the Foresthill mansion of the Powells. In any case
the news of the Miss Davis project, the "grand affair," as Phillips calls
it, could not but have caused some excitement there. But the news came at
a time when the family-fortunes were no longer what they had been when
Mary Powell had left her Parliamentarian husband and taken refuge again
under the maternal wing, amid her Royalist relatives and acquaintances,
close to the King's head-quarters. Crippled already, like other Royalist
families, by necessary contributions to the King's cause, the Powells had
begun to be aware, and more poignantly than others because of their more
straitened means, that their sacrifices were likely to be all in vain--
that Parliament was to be master, and to have the power of pains and
penalties over those whom it called Delinquents. Especially after the
shattering blow to the King at Naseby (June 14, 1645), doubt on the
subject was nearly at an end. What was then more natural than that
distressed Royalist families should be looking forward anxiously to the
amount of new distress which the final triumph of Parliament would
inflict upon them? And so in the Foresthill mansion there had been grave
consultations between Mr. and Mrs. Powell and between Mrs. Powell and her
daughter, ending in a resolution, in which Mrs. Powell was perhaps the
last to acquiesce--for the daughter afterwards pleaded that her mother
all along had been "the chief promoter of her frowardness" [Footnote:
Wood, Fasti, I. 482.]--that it would be best for the daughter to return
to London and try to make it up with Mr. Milton. At least one member of
the family would thus have a roof over her head in the hard time coming;
and might not Milton, with his Parliamentarian connexions, be able to
befriend the family generally when the time did come? Soon after Naseby,
accordingly, we are to imagine the poor young wife taking the journey to
London, accompanied by her mother or some other relative, on her
humiliating and dubious errand.
How were they to manage when they were in London? It was not a simple
matter of going straight to the house in Aldersgate Street and obtaining
admission. Ingenuity was necessary, and preparation of a mode for
approaching Milton. But that, too, had been thought of. Communications
were opened or had already been opened, with those of Milton's friends
who, it was supposed, would be willing to co-operate in the intended
reconciliation, if not in the wife's interest, at least in his. And which
of all Milton's friends was _not_ willing? In such cases, it is in
the man himself that the storm rages; he alone passionately feels: the
friends that stand by, even most sympathisingly, are cool and collected,
regarding the principal only as a difficult patient, who must be soothed
and humoured till he can be brought to reason. To Milton's friends his
Divorce notion may have seemed a just enough speculation, or one at least
about which _they_ would not quarrel with him; the real question
with them was as to the continued practical implication of his own life
and prospects with such a speculation, infamous as it seemed to
respectable society and to the leaders of religious opinion. Let him hold
it, if he would, and even write for it still; but was he, at the age of
thirty-seven, to wrap up his whole future life in it, and proceed as if
he and it must be dashed to pieces together? Was not this reconciliation
between him and his wife, of which there seemed now to be a chance, the
best thing that could happen for him as well as for her? If once it were
brought about, would not things adjust themselves so that the public
would hear no more of the perilous stuff of the Divorce Doctrine, or hear
of it only in dying echoes? So reasoned Milton's friends then, just as
people would reason now in a similar case; and the friendly plot was
arranged. Milton, it appears, was in the habit of dropping in, almost
daily, in his walk City-wards from Aldersgate Street, on a kinsman of
his, named Blackborough, whose house was in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane--
_i.e._ in that bend of Aldersgate Street which was _within_ the
Gate, and where now the General Post-Office of London stands. Here, some
day in July or August 1645, he was surprised into an interview with his
girl-wife. The good Blackborough had consented to aid and abet, and had
lent his house for the purpose; and, other friends being at hand to
second him, he had opened, let us say, the door of the room in which Mary
Powell was waiting, had ushered Milton in, and had left them together.
Then, as Phillips imagines, had come Milton's two moods in succession,--
the first his instinctive mood of anger and rejection, and the second
that mood of his slow relenting which was witnessed and helped through by
the in-bustling friends:--
_Mood First._
_Samson_. My wife, my traitress! let her not come near me!
_Chorus_. Yet on she moves; now stands and eyes thee fixt,
About to have spoke; but now, with head declined,
Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps,
And words addressed seem into tears dissolved,
Wetting the borders of her silken veil:
But now again she makes address to speak.
_Dalila._ With doubtful feet and wavering resolution
I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson,
Which to have merited, without excuse,
I cannot but acknowledge: yet, if tears
May expiate (though the fact more evil drew
In the perverse event than I foresaw),
My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon
No way assured. But conjugal affection,
Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt,
Hath led me on desirous to behold
Once more thy face, and know of thy estate;
If aught in my ability may serve
To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease
Thy mind with what amends is in my power,
Though late, yet in some part to recompense
My rash, but more unfortunate, misdeed.
_Samson._ Out, out! hyæna!
_Samson Agonistes_, 725-747.
_Mood Second._
She ended weeping, and her lowly plight,
Immoveable till peace obtained from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
Commiseration: soon his heart relented
Towards her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress,
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel whom she had displeased, his aid;
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon.
_Paradise Lost_, X. 937-946.
Was this Milton's idealized history long afterwards of his own two moods
in Blackborough's house in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane some time in July
or August 1645? So far as it was autobiography at all, I should not say
that it was much idealized, except in so far as Dalila in the land of the
Philistines, and Eve in Paradise, had to be represented poetically as
beautiful, eloquent, and fascinating, while of poor Mary Powell's claims
to beauty we know little, and our information as to her eloquence and
fascination consists in our irremovable impression that it was of her
that Milton had been thinking in that passage in his first Divorce Tract
in which he described the hard fate of a man bound fast by marriage to
"an image of earth and phlegm." From the side of Milton there was, I
think, no idealizing: hardly else than as his own Samson, or his own
Adam, in his poems, did Milton feel or speak on any important occasion of
his own real experience. If, then, the second mood now prevailed, and he
yielded, it was only, I believe, because despair for himself and pity for
another overcame him jointly, and what was alone possible was accepted as
disastrously fated. So much by way of necessary anticipation, and that
there may not be a mistake, even for a moment, as to the real nature of
the reconciliation that had been effected. Meanwhile, the friends of both
wife and husband were delighted with their success; and, till the new
house in the Barbican should be ready, young Mrs. Milton went to lodge in
the house of the Widow Webber, Christopher Milton's mother-in-law, near
St. Clement's Church in the Strand.
REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN.
September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and was
otherwise carrying all before it in the English South-west, when Montrose
in Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at Philiphaugh, and
when the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England that
the first order of Parliament for the election of Elders in all the
London parishes had gone out, and Triers of the competency of these
Elders had been appointed in all the London Presbyteries: then it was, as
near as one can calculate, that the interesting house in Aldersgate
Street was left by Milton, and he, his wife, his father, the two boys
Phillips, and the other pupils, entered together into the new house in
Barbican.
It was no great remove. The street called Barbican derived its name,
according to Stow, from the fact that at one time there had stood there
"a _burgh-kenning_, or watch-tower of the city, called in some language a
_barbican_;" and modern etymologists perfect Stow's observation by
tracing the name, through the mediæval Latin _barbacana_, to the Persian
_bála khaneh_, meaning "upper chamber," whence our less corrupt form
_balcony_, actually identical with barbican. [Footnote: Stow, as quoted
in Cunningham's _London_, Art. "Barbican;" and Wedgwood's _Dict. of
English Etymology_, Art. "Balcony."] There had, in short, been a
barbican, or outer defence of the city, at this spot, a little beyond the
particular gate called Aldersgate, just as there were such things beyond
others of the city-gates; but the name had lingered only here as applied
to the street or site where a barbican had been. The street, retaining
its warlike name, still exists--a short street going off from Aldersgate
Street at right angles on one side, and within a walk of not more than
two or three minutes from the site of Milton's Aldersgate Street house.
The house in Barbican was larger, and so much farther off from the city-
gate; but that was all. There was no real change of neighbourhood or of
street-associations. A dingy street now, dingier even than the main
thoroughfare of Aldersgate Street, Barbican was then a fair enough bit of
suburban London towards the north; and it boasted, as we already know, of
at least one aristocratic mansion in which Milton had some interest--the
town-house of the Earl of Bridgewater, ex-President of Wales, and the
peer of _Comus_. The name "Bridgewater Gardens" still designates, without
a shred of garden left there, but only grimy printing-offices and the
like instead, the portion of the street which the mansion occupied. Nay
more, till within a few years ago; Milton's own house in Barbican, with
some modern change of frontage, and some filling-up of interstices right
and left, was extant and known. Somehow, while the more important house
in Aldersgate Street had perished from the memory of the neighbourhood
(probably because the fabric itself had perished), the tradition of
Milton still clung around this house in Barbican, I have passed it many a
time, stopping to look at it, when it was occupied, if I remember
rightly, by a silk-dyer, or other such tradesman, exhibiting on his sign
the peculiar name of "Heaven," and using the lower part of it for his
shop. Though jammed in with other houses and undistinguished in the line
of bustling street, it had the appearance of having once been a
commodious enough house in the old fashion; and I have been informed that
some of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of dim glass lozenged
in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knew
one of the rooms in it as "the Schoolroom" where Milton had used to teach
his pupils. But alas! one of the city railways took it into its head that
it required to run through this precise bit of Barbican, and the house,
with others near it, was doomed to demolition. When I was last in
Barbican part of the shell of the house was still standing, roofless,
disfloored, diswindowed, and pickaxed into utter raggedness, as so much
rubbish yet waiting to be removed from the new railway gap. The
inscription yet remained on the front-door--"This was Milton's House," or
to that effect--which had been very properly put there by the contractor
or his workmen to lure people to a last look at the interior before the
demolition was complete. [Footnote: My information about the interior of
the house is from a friend who visited it just when it was doomed. Though
I had passed it often when it was yet complete, I had unfortunately, not
expecting its doom, deferred going in till it was too late; and my last
homage to it had to be a lingering saunter near and in the railway gap
behind, when there was only the remnant of it described in the text.]
FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS: HUMPHREY MOSELEY THE
BOOKSELLER.
Among Milton's first employments in his new and larger house in Barbican,
while his wife was resuming her duties and the schoolroom was getting
gradually into use, we are able to distinguish one of particular
interest. It was nothing else than the revision for the press of the
proof-sheets of the first collected edition of his Miscellaneous Poems.
By his dealings with the Press hitherto, it is to be remembered, Milton
had made himself known to most people chiefly as a prose pamphleteer.
Except his lines _On Shakespeare_, written in 1630, and prefixed
anonymously to the Second Folio Shakespeare in 1632; his _Comus_,
written and acted in 1634, and sent to the press, also without the
author's name, by his friend Henry Lawes in 1637; and his _Lycidas_,
written in 1637, and printed in 1638, in the Cambridge University volume
of Verses on Edward King's death, but only with the initials "J.M.":--
except these, and perhaps another scrap or two of Latin or English verse
that had been printed in a semi-private manner, all Milton's poems,
written at intervals over a period of more than twenty years, had
remained in his own keeping in manuscript, and had been communicated to
friends only in that form. In consequence of what had been thus printed,
or privately circulated, a certain reputation for Milton as a poet had,
indeed, been established; but the voice of this reputation was hardly
heard amid the much louder uproar caused by his eleven prose-pamphlets
between 1641 and 1645. Now, to a man who believed Poesy to be his true
calling, who had consented reluctantly to put aside "his garland and
singing robes" in order that he might engage in the work of politics, and
who had announced while doing so that in that work it was but the
strength of his left hand he could lend and not the nobler cunning of his
right, this state of public opinion about himself must have begun to be a
little disagreeable. It was the most natural thing in the world that, as
soon as there should be a lull in the political tumult, the least leisure
of the public for a return to purer and blander literature, Milton should
make some sign of resuming his garland, so as to remind those about him
of his original vocation. But, precisely in the year 1045, when Naseby
had assured the victory of Parliament, there did come, for the first time
since the war had begun, or indeed since the Long Parliament had met,
such a lull of the polemical tumult. The statistics of the English book-
trade, as they are presented in the Registers of the Stationers' Company,
verify and illustrate this statement.
Even in the year 1640, when there was political agitation enough in
England, but the Long Parliament had not yet met, there was still so much
leisure for the purer forms of literature in English society that London
publishers were bringing out such things as Masques and other remains of
Ben Jonson, the Works of Thomas Carew, various Plays by Shirley,
Glapthorne, Habington, Heywood, Killigrew, and Brome, an edition of
Herrick's Poems, and Thomas May's Supplement to Lucan. As soon, however,
as we pass beyond 1640, and the real work of the Long Parliament is
begun, such books almost entirely cease to appear. The matter then
provided for the reading of the English public consisted of a huge jumble
of Pamphlets on the Church-question, Sermons, semi-controversial
Treatises of Theology, Political Speeches, fragments of Ecclesiastical
History, Prose Invectives and Satires, and latterly, when the Civil War
was in progress, an abundance of Diurnals, Intelligencers, Mercuries, and
other news-sheets. Between 1640 and 1645 one does indeed discern
twinkling in this jumble some gems or would-be gems of the purer ray
serene. The "Epigrams Divine and Moral" of Sir Thomas Urquhart, the
translator of Rabelais, were published in April 1641; Howell's
"Instructions for Foreign Travel" came out in September in the same year;
Baker's "Chronicle of the Kings of England" in the following December; in
April 1642 there was a London edition of Thomas Randolph's Poems, which
had appeared originally at Oxford in 1638; and the publication of
Denham's "Cooper's Hill" and his "Tragedy called The Sophy" is a rather
notable event of August 1642, the very month in which the King raised his
standard. In the same month one London publisher, Francis Smethwick,
registered for his copies a number of books of the poetical kind which
had been the property of his late father, including "Mr. Drayton's
Poems," "Euphues's Golden Legacy," Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth," and
also "Hamblett, a Play," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Romeo and Juliet,"
and "Love's Labour's Lost." This transaction, however, hardly implied
that these books were in demand, but only that Smethwick wanted to secure
his interest in them on succeeding to his father's business. Afterwards,
while the war was actually raging, it is not till December 1644 that one
comes upon anything of the finer sort worth mentioning. On the 14th of
that month there was registered for publication the first edition of
"Poems, &c., written by Mr. Edmund Waller, of Beckonsfield, Esq., lately
a member of the Honourable House of Commons," but then, as we know, a
disgraced plotter, who, having, by great favour, been permitted to carry
his dear-bought life, and his remaining wealth, into exile in France,
left this parting gift to his countrymen, that they might think of him
meanwhile as kindly as they could. Except that I have not taken notice of
a publication or two of the voluminous Scotchman Alexander Rosse,
Chaplain to his Majesty, [Footnote: This Alexander Rosse, or "Dr.
Alexander Ross," made famous in _Hudibras_, was one of the singular
characters of the time, and a memoir of him, with a complete list of his
writings, would be a not uninstructive curiosity. He was a native of
Aberdeen, born about 1590, but had migrated to England, where he became
Master of the Free School at Southampton, and Chaplain in Ordinary to
King Charles. By a succession of publications of all kinds, in Latin and
in English., he acquired the reputation of being "a divine, a poet, and
an historian." He made a good deal of money, and, at his death in 1654,
left bequests, for educational purposes, to Aberdeen, Southampton,
Oxford, and Cambridge. ] the foregoing enumeration fairly represents, I
believe, the amount of book-production of the purer or non-controversial
kind that went on in London in the four loud-roaring years between 1640
and 1645.
In 1645, however, and especially after Naseby, there are symptoms of a
slightly revived leisure for other kinds of reading than were supplied by
Diurnals, Sermons, Pamphlets, and books of Polemical Theology, and of a
willingness among the London booksellers to cater for this leisure. In
that year, interspersed amid the still continuing tide of Pamphlets,
Diurnals, Sermons, and other ephemerides, were such novel appearances in
the London book-world as these--two Treatises, one physical, the other
metaphysical, by Sir Kenelm Digby, then abroad; an edition of Buxtorf's
Hebrew Grammar; an Essay by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; some metrical
religious remains of Francis Quarles, then just dead; some attempts to
introduce the mystic Jacob Bohme, by specimens of his works; a
translation of Æsop's Fables and those of Phædrus; the issue of the
second and third parts of the _Epistolæ Hoelianæ_ or James Howell's
Letters, with a re-issue of his "Dodona's Grove;" and a re-issue of
Randolph's comedy of "The Jealous Lovers." Clearly, as the Civil War was
drawing to a close, the Muses of pure History, pure Speculation or
Philosophy, Scholarship for its own sake, and even lighter Phantasy, did
hover over England again, timidly seeking some spots where they might
rest themselves in the all-prevailing controversy between Independency
and Presbyterianism.
Almost always, in such cases, a social tendency is represented in the
activity of some particular person. Nor is it otherwise here. So far as
Poetry and so-called Light Literature are concerned, one has no
difficulty in pointing to the particular London publisher who in 1645,
and from that year onwards, stood out from all his fellows by his
alertness in the trade. This was HUMPHREY MOSELEY, who had his shop at
the sign of the Prince's Arms in St Paul's Churchyard. Something in his
personal tastes, I am inclined to think, must have determined him to the
line of business which he selected; so marked is his avoidance of all
dealings in sermons, ephemeral treatises on theology, and pamphlets
either way on the present crisis, and his preference for poetry and books
of general culture. He had been in the trade, in partnership with a
Nicholas Fussel, in St. Paul's Churchyard, as early as 1634, [ Footnote:
Wood's Ath. II 503.] and shortly after that is heard of as in business
for himself. I have a note of him as registering for his copyright, on
March 16, 1639-40, Howell's "Dodona's Grove;" and thenceforward, in worse
times, he stuck to Howell. He not only published Howell's "Instructions
for Foreign Travel" in September 1641, and again the second and third
parts of Howell's "Letters" in 1645, with a re-issue of "Dodona's Grove;"
but he acquired, in the same year, the copyright of the first part of the
"Letters," which had been originally brought out by another publisher.
More significant still is the fact that it was Moseley that was the
publisher of Waller's Poems in December 1644. [Footnote: "Poems &c.
written by Mr. Ed. Waller of Beckonsfield, Esquire; lately a member of
the Honourable House of Commons. All the Lyrick Poems in this Booke were
set by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gent. of the King's Chappell, and one of his
Majestie's Private Musick. Printed and Published according to Order.
London. Printed by T.W. for Humphrey Mosley at the Princes Armes in
Paul's Churchyard: 1645:" pp.96 small 8vo. My authority for the date of
the publication of the volume--December 1644--is the Stationers'
Registers.] After that date his tendency to trade-dealings in Poetry and
the like is so manifest in the Stationers' records that I find appended
to my MS. notes, from these records, for the London Bibliography of the
year 1646, this memorandum:--"_Poetry and Pure Literature looking up
again this year, and chiefly through the medium of Moseley's shop._"
By that time Moseley had distinguished himself as the publisher of
original editions of books, not only by Howell and Waller, but also by
Milton, Davenant, Crashaw, and Shirley, and moreover as the ready
purchaser of whatever copyrights were in the market of poems and plays by
Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Ludwick Carlell, Shirley, Davenant,
Killigrew, and other celebrities dead or living. To this group of
Moseley's authors Cowley and Cartwright were soon added; and it was not
long before he snapped out of the hands of duller men Denham's Poems,
Carew's Poems, various things of Sir Kenelm Digby, and every obtainable
copyright in any of the plays of Shakespeare, Massinger, Ford, Rowley,
Middleton, Tourneur, or any other of the Elizabethan and Jacoban
dramatists. For at least the ten years from 1644 onwards there was, I
should say, no publisher in London comparable to Moseley for tact and
enterprise in the finer literature.
Moseley was only on the way to make all this reputation for himself, and
indeed Waller's volume of Poems, published in Dec. 1644, was yet the
principal advertisement of his shop, when he and Milton came together.
Pleased with the success of the Waller, it appears, Moseley thought of a
collection of Mr. Milton's Poems as a likely second experiment of the
same kind, and applied to Milton for the copy. The application was not
disagreeable to Milton; and, accordingly, some time after the middle of
1645, or just while he was preparing to remove from Aldersgate Street to
Barbican, and there came upon him the great surprise of his wife's re-
appearance, Moseley and he were busy in arrangements for the new volume.
Milton's acknowledged London publishers hitherto had been these three--
"Thomas Underhill, of the Bible in Wood Street" (_Of Reformation_, 1641,
_Of Prelatical Episcopacy_, 1641, and _Animadversions on Remonstrant's
Defence_, 1641), "John Rothwell, at the sign of the Sun in Paul's
Churchyard" (_Reason of Church Government_, 1641, and _Apology for
Smectymnuus, 1642), and "Matthew Symmons" (the _Bucer Tract_, 1644); and
this last-mentioned Symmons, who does not give the locality of his shop,
had been probably the printer also of those pamphlets of Milton which
bore no publisher's name (_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, 1643,
1644, and 1645, _Of Education_, 1644, _Areopagitica_, 1644, and
_Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_, 1645). Now, however, these were
forsaken for the moment, and for bringing out the Volume of Poems the
conjunction was Milton and Humphrey Moseley. The revisal of the proof-
sheets may have been begun in Aldersgate Street, but it must mainly, as I
have said, have been among Milton's first employments at the new house in
Barbican. Here, at all events, is Moseley's entry of the new volume in
the Stationers' Registers: "_Oct._ 6 [1645], _Mr. Moseley ent. for his
copie, under the hand of Sir Nath. Brent and both the Wardens, a booke
called Poems in English and Latyn by Mr. John Milton._" Usually the entry
of a book in the Stationers' Registers was about simultaneous with its
publication. In this case, however, there was a delay of nearly three
months between the registration and the actual appearance. The precise
day of the publication of the new volume was Jan. 2, 1645-6. [Footnote:
This is ascertained by a MS. note of the collector Thomason's, or by his
direction, on a copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum;
Press-mark E. 1126. "Jan. 2" is inserted before the word "London" in the
title-page.] Either, therefore, Moseley had registered the volume before
the printing had proceeded far, or after the sheets were printed there
was some little cause of delay.
The following is the title-page of this interesting and now very rare
volume:--
"Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several
times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Musick by Mr.
Henry Lawes, Gentleman of the King's Chappel, and one of His Majestie's
Private Musick.
'Baccare frontem
Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.'
VIRGIL, _Eclog._ vii.
Printed and publish'd according to Order. London, Printed by Ruth
Raworth, for Humphrey Moseley; and are to be sold at the signe of the
Princes Arms in Paul's Churchyard. 1645."
The volume is a very tiny octavo, divided into two parts in the paging.
First come the ENGLISH POEMS, occupying 120 pages, and arranged thus:--
_On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, compos'd_ 1629; _A Paraphrase on
Psalm CXIV. _; _Psalm CXXXVI. _; _The Passion_; _On Time_; _Upon the
Circumcision_; _At a Solemn Music_; _An Epitaph on the Marchioness of
Winchester_; _Song on May Morning_; _On Shakespear_, 1630; _On the
University Carrier who, &c. _; _Another on the Same_; _L'Allegro_; _Il
Penseroso_; _Sonnets_, English and Italian--ten in number (I. "O
Nightingale;" II. "Donna leggiadra;" III. "Qual in colle," with the
attached "Canzone;" IV. "Diodati e te'l;" V. "Per certo i bei;" VI.
"Giovane piano;" VII. "How soon hath Time;" VIII. "Captain or Colonel;"
IX. "Lady that in the prime;" X. "Daughter to that good Earl");--
_Arcades_; _Lycidas_; _Comus_. [Footnote: To this enumeration of the
English pieces in the volume of 1645 I may append three bibliographical
notes--(1) Of the 28 pieces the original drafts of 10 still exist in the
volume of Milton MSS. in Trinity College, Cambridge--viz.: _On Time_,
_Upon the Circumcision_, _At a Solemn Music_, Sonnets 7, 8, 9, and 10,
_Arcades_, _Lycidas_, and _Comus_. All these drafts are in Milton's own
hand, except that of Sonnet 8, only the heading of which is in his hand.
Of the other 18 pieces, the most important of which are _L'Allegro_ and
_Il Penseroso_, the original MSS. have not come down to us. (2) It will
be seen that two of the known early English Poems are omitted in the
volume: viz. the piece _On the Death of a Fail Infant dying of a Cough_--
_i.e._ the poem on the death of his niece, the infant girl Phillips,
written in 1626; and the College piece of 1628 entitled _At a Vacation
Exercise_. These pieces first appeared in the Second Edition of the Poems
in 1673. (3) It may also be noted that the latest written pieces which
appear in the volume of 1645 are Sonnets 9 and 10--the one to the
anonymous young lady, the other to the Lady Margaret Ley. We have
assigned them to the year 1644, but they _may_ have been as late as
1645.] As if to call attention to _Comus_ as the longest and chief of the
poems, it has a separate title-page, thus, "_A Mask of the same Author,
presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then
President of Wales, Anno Dom. 1645;_" but, though there is this break of
a new title-page, the paging runs on without interruption, _Lycidas_
ending p. 65, and _Comus_ taking up the rest to p. 120. Here, however,
there is a _complete_ break, as if it were intended that the English
Poems, there ending, might be bound by themselves. The LATIN POEMS follow
as a separate collection, paged separately from p. 1 to p. 88, and with
this new title-page prefixed to them: "_Joannis Miltoni Londinensis
Poemata: quorum pleraque intra annum oetatis vigesimum conscripsit: nunc
primum edita. Londini, Typis R.R., Prostant ad Insignia Principis, in
Coemeterio D. Pauli, apud Humphredum Moseley, 1645._" There is, however,
a double arrangement of the Latin Poems, or a distribution of them into
two classes. First come those which constitute the so-called ELEGIARUM
LIBER; viz., the "Elegies" proper, numbered from I. to VII., as they now
stand in all editions of Milton, together with the eight little scraps in
the same elegiac verse (five of them on the subject of the Gunpowder
Plot, and three on the Italian singer Leonora) which some modern editors
have preferred to detach from the Elegies, and put under the separate
heading of "Epigrams." This is contrary to Milton's intention; for the
phrase "Elegiarum Finis" _follows_ those scraps in the volume, showing
that he meant them to go with the Elegies, and that, in fact, he thought
it permissible to call anything an Elegy that was written in the ordinary
elegiac verse of alternate Hexameter and Pentameter. Accordingly, all his
Latin poems in that kind of verse having been included in the _Elegiarum
Liber_, all his other Latin poems, not in that kind of verse, but either
in Hexameter pure or in rarer metres, together with two fragments of
Greek verse, are regarded as "Sylvæ," and constitute the distinct
SYLVARUM LIBER which ends the volume. First among the "Sylvæ" come the
six Latin poems of the Cambridge period--_In obitum Procancellarii
Medici, In Quintum Novembris, In obitum Præsulis Eliensis, Naturam non
pati Senium, De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, and Ad
Patrem_; then, by way of typographic interruption, come the two scraps of
Greek verse--viz. _Psalm LXIV_. and the scrap entitled _Philosophus ad
Regem Quendam_, &c.; after which are the two Latin pieces, _Ad Salsillum_
and _Mansus_, written in Italy, and the _Epitaphium Damonis_, written
immediately after the return to England. This last stands a little apart
from the body of the "Sylvæ," as if Milton attached a peculiar sacredness
to it.
Such is a general description of the First or 1645 Edition of Milton's
Miscellaneous Poems. The volume, however, presents some points of
additional interest:----Has the reader noticed the motto on the title-
page from Virgil's seventh Eclogue? It is peculiarly significant of the
mood in which the volume was published. Milton, who had called himself
Thyrsis in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, here adopts in the happiest
manner the words of the young poet-shepherd Thyrsis in Virgil's pastoral.
Thyrsis there, contending with Corydon for the prize in poetry, begs from
his brother shepherds, if not the ivy of perfectly approved excellence,
at least
"Some green thing round the brow,
Lest ill tongues hurt the poet yet to be."
Could anything more gracefully express Milton's intention in the volume?
This collection of his Poems, written between his sixteenth year and his
thirty-eighth, was a smaller collection by much, he seems to own, than he
had once hoped to have ready by that point in his manhood; but it might
at least correct the impression of him common among those who knew him
only as a prose pamphleteer. Something green round his brow for the
present, were it only the sweet field-spikenard, would attest that he had
given his youth to Poesy, and would re-announce, amid the clamour of evil
tongues which his polemical writings had raised, that he meant to return
to Poesy before all was done, and to die, when he did die, a great Poet
of England.
This feeling, which is the motive of the publication, appears curiously
in all the details of its arrangement. The order in which the poems are
printed, within each division or class, is, as nearly as possible, the
order in which they were written; the deviations being only such as
proper editorial art required. To almost every juvenile piece, too,
whether in English or in Latin, there is prefixed some indication of the
exact date of its composition; and the title-page of the Latin Poems
distinctly solicits attention to the fact that most of them were composed
before the author was twenty. Even more remarkable than this care in the
dating is the introduction into the volume of all the eulogiums which
Milton had already received from private friends on account of the Poems,
or of any portion of them. To the _Comus_ there is prefixed Henry
Lawes's eulogistic Dedication of it, in the edition of 1637, to Viscount
Brackley, and also Sir Henry Wotton's cordial letter to Milton, with its
praise of the poem in that edition, when Milton was on the start for his
continental tour in the spring of 1638. To the Latin Poems as a whole
there is even a more formal vestibule of encomiums. First of all, there
is a little preface by Milton in Latin apologizing to the reader for
troubling him with them. "Though these following testimonies concerning
the Author," he says, "were understood by himself to be pronounced not so
much _about_ him as _over_ him, by way of subject or occasion--
it being the general habit of men of brilliant genius, if they are at the
same time one's friends, to fashion their praises too eagerly rather by
the standard of their own excellencies than by truth--yet he was
unwilling that the singular goodwill of such persons towards him should
remain unknown, and the rather because others advised him strongly to the
step he is now taking. While therefore he puts from him with all his
strength the imputation of desiring overpraise, and would rather not have
attributed to him more than is due, he cannot deny but he considers the
opinion of him meantime by wise and celebrated men a very high honour."
Accordingly there here follow the encomiums of his various Italian
friends, known to us long ago, and which had been carefully preserved by
him till now among his papers--the Latin distich by the famous Marquis
Manso of Naples; the outrageously complimentary Latin verses of the two
Romans, Salzilli and Selvaggi; and the more interesting Italian ode of
compliment and Latin Dedication by the two Florentines, Francini and
Carlo Dati. (See Vol. I. pp. 732-4, 753-4, and 768.) One has to remember
that the insertion of such commendatory verses in new volumes of poetry
was a fashion of the day. But, besides, there was really the anxiety for
"something green round the brow." In short, it is as if Milton said to
his countrymen--"Here is plenty of greenery, and to spare, with florid
stuff intermixed, of which I am rather ashamed: pick out as much or as
little of it as you like; only, at this date in my life, to prevent
mistake, let me have _some_ kind of garland."
The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, for one, was most willing to oblige
Milton. Prefixed to the volume, on the blank space before the poems
themselves begin, is this most interesting preface in Moseley's own
name:--
"THE STATIONER TO THE READER.
"It is not any private respect of gain, gentle Reader--for the slightest
Pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men--but
it is the love I have to our own language, that hath made me diligent to
collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew
the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue; and it's the worth of
these both English and Latin Poems, not the flourish of any prefixed
encomions, that can invite thee to buy them--though these are not without
the highest commendations and applause of the learnedest Academicks, both
domestick and foreign, and amongst those of our own country the
unparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eton, Sir Henry
Wootton. I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how
harmonious thy soul is: perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better.
But, howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that encouragement I have
already received from the most ingenious men, in their clear and
courteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late choice pieces, hath once
more made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these ever-
green and not to be blasted laurels. The Author's more peculiar
excellency in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers or
to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide
itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the
light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous
Spenser wrote; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated
as sweetly excelled. Reader, if thou art eagle-eyed to censure their
worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal.
"Thine to command, HUMPH. MOSELEY."
This is most creditable to Moseley, and confirms the impression of him
which is to be derived from all the known facts of his publishing life.
One notices, with real respect, his introductory statement about himself,
that, in an age when only pamphlets were thought vendible, he was
resolved, from his own liking for good literature, to keep to a finer
line of business; one observes with interest the admission that it was
Moseley who had solicited the copy from Milton, and not Milton who had
offered the copy; and one is struck with the justness of taste shown in
the hint that, however choice Mr. Waller's late Pieces might be, here was
a poet of "more peculiar excellency." Above all, nothing could be
critically truer than the assertion that since Spenser's death there had
been no English poetry of Spenser's kind equal to that contained in this
volume.
Another feature of the volume, for which Moseley, without doubt, is also
responsible, is a prefixed portrait of the Author. There was then living
in London a certain William Marshall, an engraver and sketcher of designs
for books. He had been some fourteen or fifteen years in this employment;
and among the many heads he had done, separately, or as frontispieces to
books, ere those of Richard Brathwayte the Poet, Dr. Donne, Archbishop
Abbot, Laud, and Dr. Daniel Featley. Very probably Moseley had already
had dealings with Marshall, as he had certainly had with the more
celebrated engraver Hollar, who had done a frontispiece for him for
Howell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel." At all events, Hollar being
now out of the way and in trouble (he and Inigo Jones were in the Marquis
of Winchester's house at Basing when it was taken by Cromwell), it was
Marshall that came in for most such pieces of engraving work as Moseley
and other London publishers required. The connexion between him and
Moseley became, indeed, a permanent one, so that Marshall is perhaps best
remembered now by Horace Walpole's description of him as "the graver of
heads for Moseley's books of poetry." If the first head he did for
Moseley was this for the edition of Milton's Poems in 1645, it was an
unlucky beginning of the connexion. It turned out, at all events, to be
an unfortunate piece of work for Marshall's own memory with posterity:--
Moseley, we are to suppose, insisted on a portrait of Milton as a proper
ornament to be prefixed to such a volume, chose Marshall to do it, and
sent him to Milton. Now Milton, as we know, had some recollection of
Marshall, and not a very respectful one. It was Marshall that had done
not only Dr. Featley's portrait, but also the caricature of the different
sorts of Anabaptists and Sectaries, including a river-scene with bathers
of both sexes, which had been inserted in the Doctor's treatise entitled
_The Dippers Dipt_. Milton, as we have seen (_antè_, p. 311), while
administering punishment to Dr. Featley in his _Tetrachordon_ on account
of a passage in this treatise, had not allowed the vulgarity of the
engraving in Featley's book to escape. "For which I do not commend his
_marshalling_" had been Milton's punning notice of it in a parenthesis of
the punishment. When, therefore, Mr. Marshall came to Milton from
Moseley, Milton must have remembered him as the caricaturist for Dr.
Featley's book. Nevertheless, he seems to have given him every facility
for the portrait wanted. Marshall's habit, in such cases, was to take a
sketch from the life when he could get it, but to assist himself with
whatever was at hand in the shape of a picture or former engraving.
Milton, therefore, may have given him a sitting or two, but perhaps
avoided unnecessary trouble by referring to that portrait of himself at
the age of 21, now celebrated as "the Onslow Portrait," which then hung
in some room in the house in Barbican. As the forthcoming volume
consisted largely of Milton's juvenile Poems, an engraving from that
portrait, touched up a little, would be the very thing. And so Marshall
set to work. His dilatoriness over the plate may have been the cause of
the unusual delay in the publication of the volume after it had been
registered. In due time, however, the result was presented to Moseley and
to Milton. And what a result! How they must have both stared! The general
design of the plate was, indeed, pretty enough--an oval containing the
portrait, with a background partly of curtain and low wall or window-
sill, partly of an Arcadian scene of trees and meadow beyond, in which a
shepherd is piping under one of the trees, and a shepherd and shepherdess
are dancing; and then, outside the oval, in the four corners, the Muses
Melpomene, Erato, Urania, and Clio, with their names. All this was
passable; it was the portrait within the oval that gave the shock. The
face is that of a grim, gaunt, stolid gentleman of middle age, looking
like anybody or nobody, with long hair parted in the middle and falling
down on both sides to the lace collar round the neck; one shoulder is
cloaked, and the other shown tight in the buttoned tunic or coat; and the
arms meet clumsily across the breast, the left arm uppermost. Round the
oval was the legend, "_Joannis Miltoni Angli Effigies, anno ætatis
vigess: pri. W. M. Sculp._"--i.e. "Portrait of John Milton, Englishman,
in the 2lst year of his age: W. M. Sculp." The legend _said_ twenty-one
years of age; the portrait _looked_ somewhere about fifty. What was to be
done? What _ought_ to have been done was to cancel the plate and print
the book without it. Perhaps not to vex Moseley, Milton did not insist on
this, but allowed the engraving, just as it was, to be prefixed to the
volume. But he took his revenge in one of the most malicious practical
jokes ever perpetrated. "Mr. Marshall," he must have said to the
unfortunate engraver, "here are a few lines of Greek which I should like
to have carefully engraved on the plate under the portrait," at the same
time handing him the following:--
[Greek: Amathei gegraphthai cheiri tænde men eikona
Phaiæs tach an, pras eidos autophues blepon.
Ton d'ektupoton ouk epignontes, philoi,
Gelate phaulou dusmimæma xographou.]
Away went Mr. Marshall, and duly, and with some pains, engraved these
letters on the plate, utterly ignorant of their meaning. Accordingly,
when the volume appeared (Jan. 2, 1645-6), purchasers of it did indeed
find Marshall's portrait of Milton in it, but those among them who knew
Greek could read, underneath it, inscribed by Marshall's own graving
tool, this damning criticism of his handiwork:--
"That an unskilful hand had carved this print
You'd say at once, seeing the living face;
But, finding here no jot of me, my friends,
Laugh at the botching artist's mis-attempt."