It is now more than sixty years ago since Mr. Carlyle took occasion to
observe, in his Life of Schiller, that, except the Newgate Calendar,
there was no more sickening reading than the biographies of authors.
Allowing for the vivacity of the comparison, and only remarking, with
reference to the Newgate Calendar, that its compilers have usually been
very inferior wits, in fact attorneys, it must be owned that great
creative and inventive genius, the most brilliant gifts of bright fancy
and happy expression, and a glorious imagination, well-nigh seeming as if
it must be inspired, have too often been found most unsuitably lodged in
ill-living and scandalous mortals. Though few things, even in what is
called Literature, are more disgusting than to hear small critics, who
earn their bite and sup by acting as the self-appointed showmen of the
works of their betters, heaping terms of moral opprobrium upon those
whose genius is, if not exactly a lamp unto our feet, at all events a joy
to our hearts,--still, not even genius can repeal the Decalogue, or re-
write the sentence of doom, 'He which is filthy, let him be filthy
still.' It is therefore permissible to wish that some of our great
authors had been better men.
It is possible to dislike John Milton. Men have been found able to do
so, and women too; amongst these latter his daughters, or one of them at
least, must even be included. But there is nothing sickening about his
biography, for it is the life of one who early consecrated himself to the
service of the highest Muses, who took labour and intent study as his
portion, who aspired himself to be a noble poem, who, Republican though
he became, is what Carlyle called him, the moral king of English
literature.
Milton was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, on the 9th of December, 1608.
This is most satisfactory, though indeed what might have been expected.
There is a notable disposition nowadays, amongst the meaner-minded
provincials, to carp and gird at the claims of London to be considered
the mother-city of the Anglo-Saxon race, to regret her pre-eminence, and
sneer at her fame. In the matters of municipal government, gas, water,
fog, and snow, much can be alleged and proved against the English
capital, but in the domain of poetry, which I take to be a nation's best
guaranteed stock, it may safely be said that there are but two shrines in
England whither it is necessary for the literary pilgrim to carry his
cockle hat and shoon--London, the birthplace of Chaucer, Spenser, Ben
Jonson, Milton, Herrick, Pope, Gray, Blake, Keats, and Browning, and
Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. Of English poets it
may be said generally they are either born in London or remote country
places. The large provincial towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is
more pathetic than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug the
memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may have been born within their
statutory boundaries. This has its advantages, for it keeps alive in
certain localities fames that would otherwise have utterly perished.
Parnassus has forgotten all about poor Henry Kirke White, but the lace
manufacturers of Nottingham still name him with whatever degree of
reverence they may respectively consider to be the due of letters.
Manchester is yet mindful of Dr. John Byrom. Liverpool clings to Roscoe.
Milton remained faithful to his birth-city, though, like many another
Londoner, when he was persecuted in one house he fled into another. From
Bread Street he moved to St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street; from Fleet
Street to Aldersgate Street; from Aldersgate Street to the Barbican; from
the Barbican to the south side of Holborn; from the south side of Holborn
to what is now called York Street, Westminster; from York Street,
Westminster, to the north side of Holborn; from the north side of Holborn
to Jewin Street; from Jewin Street to his last abode in Bunhill Fields.
These are not vain repetitions if they serve to remind a single reader
how all the enchantments of association lie about him. Englishwomen have
been found searching about Florence for the street where George Eliot
represents Romola as having lived, who have admitted never having been to
Jewin Street, where the author of _Lycidas_ and _Paradise Lost_ did in
fact live.
Milton's father was the right kind of father, amiable, accomplished, and
well-to-do. He was by business what was then called a scrivener, a term
which has received judicial interpretation, and imported a person who
arranged loans on mortgage, receiving a commission for so doing. The
poet's mother, whose baptismal name was Sarah (his father was, like
himself, John), was a lady of good extraction, and approved excellence
and virtue. We do not know very much about her, for the poet was one of
those rare men of genius who are prepared to do justice to their fathers.
Though Sarah Milton did not die till 1637, she only knew her son as the
author of _Comus_, though it is surely a duty to believe that no son
would have poems like _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ in his desk, and not
at least once produce them and read them aloud to his mother. These
poems, though not published till 1645, were certainly composed in his
mother's life. She died before the troubles began, the strife and
contention in which her well-graced son, the poet, the dreamer of all
things beautiful and cultured, the author of the glancing, tripping
measure--
'Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity'--
was destined to take a part, so eager and so fierce, and for which he was
to sacrifice twenty years of a poet's life.
The poet was sent to St. Paul's School, where he had excellent teaching
of a humane and expanding character, and he early became, what he
remained until his sight left him, a strenuous reader and a late student.
'Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen on some high, lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear.'
Whether the maid who was told off by the elder Milton to sit up till
twelve or one o'clock in the morning for this wonderful Pauline realized
that she was a kind of doorkeeper in the house of genius, and blessed
accordingly, is not known, and may be doubted. When sixteen years old
Milton proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge, where his memory is
still cherished; and a mulberry-tree, supposed in some way to be his,
rather unkindly kept alive. Milton was not a submissive pupil; in fact,
he was never a submissive anything, for there is point in Dr. Johnson's
malicious remark, that man in Milton's opinion was born to be a rebel,
and woman a slave.
But in most cases, at all events, the rebel did well to be rebellious,
and perhaps he was never so entirely in the right as when he protested
against the slavish traditions of Cambridge educational methods in 1625.
Universities must, however, at all times prove disappointing places to
the young and ingenuous soul, who goes up to them eager for literature,
seeing in every don a devotee to intellectual beauty, and hoping that
lectures will, by some occult process--the _genius loci_--initiate him
into the mysteries of taste and the storehouses of culture. And then the
improving conversation, the flashing wit, the friction of mind with
mind,--these are looked for, but hardly found; and the young scholar
groans in spirit, and perhaps does as Milton did--quarrels with his
tutor. But if he is wise he will, as Milton also did, make it up again,
and get the most that he can from his stony-hearted stepmother before the
time comes for him to bid her his _Vale vale et aeternum vale_.
Milton remained seven years at Cambridge--from 1625 to 1632--from his
seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year. Any intention or thought he ever
may have had of taking orders he seems early to have rejected with a
characteristic scorn. He considered a state of subscription to articles
a state of slavery, and Milton was always determined, whatever else he
was or might become, to be his own man. Though never in sympathy with
the governing tone of the place, there is no reason to suppose that
Milton (any more than others) found this lack seriously to interfere with
a fair amount of good solid enjoyment from day to day. He had friends
who courted his society, and pursuits both grave and gay to occupy his
hours of study and relaxation. He was called the 'Lady' of his college,
on account of his personal beauty and the purity and daintiness of his
life and conversation.
After leaving Cambridge Milton began his life, so attractive to one's
thoughts, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had a house in
which his mother was living. Here, for five years, from his
twenty-fourth to his twenty-ninth year--a period often stormy in the
lives of poets--he continued his work of self-education. Some of his
Cambridge friends appear to have grown a little anxious, on seeing one
who had distinction stamped upon his brow, doing what the world calls
nothing; and Milton himself was watchful, and even suspicious. His
second sonnet records this state of feeling:
'How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.'
And yet no poet had ever a more beautiful springtide, though it was
restless, as spring should be, with the promise of greater things and
'high midsummer pomps.' These latter it was that were postponed almost
too long.
Milton at Horton made up his mind to be a great poet--neither more nor
less; and with that end in view he toiled unceasingly. A more solemn
dedication of a man by himself to the poetical office cannot be imagined.
Everything about him became, as it were, pontifical, almost sacramental.
A poet's soul must contain the perfect shape of all things good, wise,
and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure,
his thoughts high, his studies intense. There was no drinking at the
'Mermaid' for John Milton. His thoughts, like his joys, were not those
that
'are in widest commonalty spread.'
When in his walks he met the Hodge of his period, he is more likely to
have thought of a line in Virgil than of stopping to have a chat with the
poor fellow. He became a student of the Italian language, and writes to
a friend: 'I who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in
the stream of these (the classical) languages, but in proportion to my
years have swallowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire
with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others;
nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent waves of
its Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent
my visiting with delight the streams of the Arno and the hills of
Faesolae.'
Now it was that he, in his often-quoted words written to the young
Deodati, doomed to an early death, was meditating 'an immortality of
fame,' letting his wings grow and preparing to fly. But dreaming though
he ever was of things to come, none the less, it was at Horton he
composed _Comus_, _Lycidas_, _L'Allegro_, and _Il Penseroso_, poems which
enable us half sadly to realize how much went and how much was sacrificed
to make the author of _Paradise Lost_.
After five years' retirement Milton began to feel the want of a little
society, of the kind that is 'quiet, wise, and good,' and he meditated
taking chambers in one of the Inns of Court, where he could have a
pleasant and shady walk under 'immemorial elms,' and also enjoy the
advantages of a few choice associates at home and an elegant society
abroad. The death of his mother in 1637 gave his thoughts another
direction, and he obtained his father's permission to travel to Italy,
'that woman-country, wooed not wed,' which has been the mistress of so
many poetical hearts, and was so of John Milton's. His friends and
relatives saw but one difficulty in the way. John Milton the younger,
though not at this time a Nonconformist, was a stern and unbending
Protestant, and was as bitter an opponent of His Holiness the Pope as he
certainly would have been, had his days been prolonged, of His Majesty
the Pretender.
There is something very characteristic in this almost inflamed hostility
in the case of a man with such love of beauty and passion for
architecture and music as always abided in Milton, and who could write:
'But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters' pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy-proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before my eyes.'
Here surely is proof of an aesthetic nature beyond most of our modern
raptures; but none the less, and at the very same time, Rome was for
Milton the 'grim wolf' who, 'with privy paw, daily devours apace.' It is
with a sigh of sad sincerity that Dr. Newman admits that Milton breathes
through his pages a hatred of the Catholic Church, and consequently the
Cardinal feels free to call him a proud and rebellious creature of God.
That Milton was both proud and rebellious cannot be disputed.
Nonconformists need not claim him for their own with much eagerness. What
he thought of Presbyterians we know, and he was never a church member, or
indeed a church-goer. Dr. Newman has admitted that the poet Pope was an
unsatisfactory Catholic; Milton was certainly an unsatisfactory
Dissenter. Let us be candid in these matters. Milton was therefore
bidden by his friends, and by those with whom he took counsel, to hold
his peace whilst in Rome about the 'grim wolf,' and he promised to do so,
adding, however, the Miltonic proviso that this was on condition that the
Papists did not attack his religion first. 'If anyone,' he wrote, 'in
the very city of the Pope attacked the orthodox religion, I defended it
most freely.' To call the Protestant religion, which had not yet
attained to its second century, the orthodox religion under the shadow of
the Vatican was to have the courage of his opinions. But Milton was not
a man to be frightened of schism. That his religious opinions should be
peculiar probably seemed to him to be almost inevitable, and not
unbecoming. He would have agreed with Emerson, who declares that would
man be great he must be a Nonconformist.
There is something very fascinating in the records we have of Milton's
one visit to the Continent. A more impressive Englishman never left our
shores. Sir Philip Sidney perhaps approaches him nearest. Beautiful
beyond praise, and just sufficiently conscious of it to be careful never
to appear at a disadvantage, dignified in manners, versed in foreign
tongues, yet full of the ancient learning--a gentleman, a scholar, a
poet, a musician, and a Christian--he moved about in a leisurely manner
from city to city, writing Latin verses for his hosts and Italian sonnets
in their ladies' albums, buying books and music, and creating, one cannot
doubt, an all too flattering impression of an English Protestant. To
travel in Italy with Montaigne or Milton, or Evelyn or Gray, or Shelley,
or, pathetic as it is, with the dying Sir Walter, is perhaps more
instructive than to go there for yourself with a tourist's ticket. Old
Montaigne, who was but forty-seven when he made his journey, and whom
therefore I would not call old had not Pope done so before me, is the
most delightful of travelling companions, and as easy as an old shoe. A
humaner man than Milton, a wiser man than Evelyn--with none of the
constraint of Gray, or the strange, though fascinating, outlandishness of
Shelley--he perhaps was more akin to Scott than any of the other
travellers; but Scott went to Italy an overwhelmed man, whose only fear
was he might die away from the heather and the murmur of Tweed. However,
Milton is the most improving companion of them all, and amidst the
impurities of Italy, 'in all the places where vice meets with so little
discouragement, and is protected with so little shame,' he remained the
Milton of Cambridge and Horton, and did nothing to pollute the pure
temple of a poet's mind. He visited Paris, Nice, Genoa, Pisa, and
Florence, staying in the last city two months, and living on terms of
great intimacy with seven young Italians, whose musical names he duly
records. These were the months of August and September, not nowadays
reckoned safe months for Englishmen to be in Florence--modern lives being
raised in price. From Florence he proceeded through Siena to Rome, where
he also stayed two months. There he was present at a magnificent
entertainment given by the Cardinal Francesco Barberini in his palace,
and heard the singing of the celebrated Leonora Baroni. It is not for
one moment to be supposed that he sought an interview with the Pope, as
Montaigne had done, who was exhorted by His Holiness 'to persevere in the
devotion he had ever manifested in the cause of the Church;' and yet
perhaps Montaigne by his essays did more to sap the authority of Peter's
chair than Milton, however willing, was able to do.
It has been remarked that Milton's chief enthusiasm in Italy was not art,
but music, which falls in with Coleridge's _dictum_, that Milton is not
so much a picturesque as a musical poet--meaning thereby, I suppose, that
the effects which he produces and the scenes which he portrays are rather
suggested to us by the rhythm of his lines than by actual verbal
descriptions. From Rome Milton went to Naples, whence he had intended to
go to Sicily and Greece; but the troubles beginning at home he forewent
this pleasure, and consequently never saw Athens, which was surely a
great pity. He returned to Rome, where, troubles or no troubles, he
stayed another two months. From Rome he went back to Florence, which he
found too pleasant to leave under two more months. Then he went to
Lucca, and so to Venice, where he was very stern with himself, and only
lingered a month. From Venice he went to Milan, and then over the Alps
to Geneva, where he had dear friends. He was back in London in August,
1639, after an absence of fifteen months.
The times were troubled enough. Charles I., whose literary taste was so
good that one must regret the mischance that placed a crown upon his
comely head, was trying hard, at the bidding of a priest, to thrust
Episcopacy down Scottish throats, who would not have it at any price. He
was desperately in need of money, and the House of Commons (which had
then a _raison d'etre_) was not prepared to give him any except on terms.
Altogether it was an exciting time, but Milton was in no way specially
concerned in it. Milton looms so large in our imagination amongst the
figures of the period that, despite Dr. Johnson's sneers, we are apt to
forget his political insignificance, and to fancy him curtailing his tour
and returning home to take his place amongst the leaders of the
Parliament men. Return home he did, but it was, as another pedagogue has
reminded us, to receive boys 'to be boarded and instructed.' Dr. Johnson
tells us that we ought not to allow our veneration for Milton to rob us
of a joke at the expense of a man 'who hastens home because his
countrymen are contending for their liberty, and when he reaches the
scene of action vapours away his patriotism in a private
boarding-school;' but that this observation was dictated by the good
Doctor's spleen is made plain by his immediately proceeding to point out,
with his accustomed good sense, that there is really nothing to laugh at,
since it was desirable that Milton, whose father was alive and could only
make him a small allowance, should do something, and there was no shame
in his adopting an honest and useful employment.
To be a Parliament man was no part of the ambition of one who still
aspired to be a poet; who was not yet blind to the heavenly vision; who
was still meditating what should be his theme, and who in the meantime
chastised his sister's sons, unruly lads, who did him no credit and bore
him no great love.
The Long Parliament met in November, 1640, and began its work--brought
Strafford to the scaffold, clapped Laud into the Tower, Archbishop though
he was, and secured as best they could the permanency of Parliamentary
institutions. None of these things specially concerned John Milton. But
there also uprose the eternal Church question, 'What sort of Church are
we to have?' The fierce controversy raged, and 'its fair enticing
fruit,' spread round 'with liberal hand,' proved too much for the father
of English epic.
'He scrupled not to eat
Against his better knowledge.'
In other words, he commenced pamphleteer, and between May, 1641, and the
following March he had written five pamphlets against Episcopacy, and
used an intolerable deal of bad language, which, however excusable in a
heated controversialist, ill became the author of _Comus_.
The war broke out in 1642, but Milton kept house. The 'tented field' had
no attractions for him.
In the summer of 1643 he took a sudden journey into the country, and
returned home to his boys with a wife, the daughter of an Oxfordshire
Cavalier. Poor Mary Powell was but seventeen, her poetic lord was thirty-
five. From the country-house of a rollicking squire to Aldersgate Street
was somewhat too violent a change. She had left ten brothers and sisters
behind her, the eldest twenty-one, the youngest four. As one looks upon
this picture and on that, there is no need to wonder that the poor girl
was unhappy. The poet, though keenly alive to the subtle charm of a
woman's personality, was unpractised in the arts of daily companionship.
He expected to find much more than he brought of general good-fellowship.
He had an ideal ever in his mind of both bodily and spiritual excellence,
and he was almost greedy to realize both, but he knew not how. One of
his complaints was that his wife was mute and insensate, and sat silent
at his board. It must, no doubt, have been deadly dull, that house in
Aldersgate Street. Silence reigned, save when broken by the cries of the
younger Phillips sustaining chastisement. Milton had none of that noble
humanitarian spirit which had led Montaigne long years before him to
protest against the cowardly traditions of the schoolroom. After a month
of Aldersgate Street, Mrs. Milton begged to go home. Her wish was
granted, and she ran back to her ten brothers and sisters, and when her
leave of absence was up refused to return. Her husband was furiously
angry; and in a time so short as almost to enforce the belief that he
began the work during the honeymoon, was ready with his celebrated
pamphlet, _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restored to the good of
both sexes_. He is even said, with his accustomed courage, to have paid
attentions to a Miss Davis, who is described as a very handsome and witty
gentlewoman, and therefore not one likely to sit silent at his board; but
she was a sensible girl as well, and had no notion of a married suitor.
Of Milton's pamphlet it is everyone's duty to speak with profound
respect. It is a noble and passionate cry for a high ideal of married
life, which, so he argued, had by inflexible laws been changed into a
drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or
redemption. He shuddered at the thought of a man and woman being
condemned, for a mistake of judgment, to be bound together to their
unspeakable wearisomeness and despair, for, he says, not to be beloved
and yet retained is the greatest injury to a gentle spirit. Our present
doctrine of divorce, which sets the household captive free on payment of
a broken vow, but on no less ignoble terms, is not founded on the
congruous, and is indeed already discredited, if not disgraced.
This pamphlet on divorce marks the beginning of Milton's mental
isolation. Nobody had a word to say for it. Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
and Independent held his doctrine in as much abhorrence as did the
Catholic, and all alike regarded its author as either an impracticable
dreamer or worse. It was written certainly in too great haste, for his
errant wife, actuated by what motives cannot now be said, returned to her
allegiance, was mindful of her plighted troth, and, suddenly entering his
room, fell at his feet and begged to be forgiven. She was only nineteen,
and she said it was all her mother's fault. Milton was not a sour man,
and though perhaps too apt to insist upon repentance preceding
forgiveness, yet when it did so he could forgive divinely. In a very
short time the whole family of Powells, whom the war had reduced to low
estate, were living under his roof in the Barbican, whither he moved on
the Aldersgate house proving too small for his varied belongings. The
poet's father also lived with his son.
Mrs. Milton had four children, three of whom, all daughters, lived to
grow up. The mother died in childbirth in 1652, being then twenty-six
years of age.
The _Areopagitica_, _a Speech for Unlicensed Printing_, followed the
divorce pamphlet, but it also fell upon deaf ears. Of all religious
sects the Presbyterians, who were then dominant, are perhaps the least
likely to forego the privilege of interference in the affairs of others.
Instead of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, instead
of 'a lordly Imprimatur, one from Lambeth House, another from the west
end of Paul's,' there was appointed a commission of twenty Presbyterians
to act as State Licensers. Then was Milton's soul stirred within him to
a noble rage. His was a threefold protest--as a citizen of a State he
fondly hoped had been free, as an author, and as a reader. As a citizen
he protested against so unnecessary and improper an interference. It is
not, he cried, 'the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop,
that will make us a happy nation,' but the practice of virtue, and virtue
means freedom to choose. Milton was a manly politician, and detested
with his whole soul grandmotherly legislation. 'He who is not trusted
with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing
to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great argument to think himself
reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was born, for other than a fool or
a foreigner.' 'They are not skilful considerers of human things who
imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin.' 'And were I the
chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as
much the forcible hindrance of evil doing.' These are texts upon which
sermons, not inapplicable to our own day, might be preached. Milton has
made our first parent so peculiarly his own, that any observations of his
about Adam are interesting. 'Many there be that complain of Divine
Providence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When God
gave him reason He gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but
choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam. We ourselves esteem
not of that obedience a love or gift which is of force. God therefore
left him free, set before him a provoking object ever almost in his eyes;
herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of
his abstinence.' So that according to Milton even Eden was a state of
trial. As an author, Milton's protest has great force. 'And what if the
author shall be one so copious of fancy as to have many things well worth
the adding come into his mind after licensing, while the book is yet
under the press, which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest
writers, and that perhaps a dozen times in one book? The printer dares
not go beyond his licensed copy. So often then must the author trudge to
his leave-giver that those his new insertions may be viewed, and many a
jaunt will be made ere that licenser--for it must be the same man--can
either be found, or found at leisure; meanwhile either the press must
stand still, which is no small damage, or the author lose his accuratest
thoughts, and send forth the book worse than he made it, which to a
diligent writer is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall.'
Milton would have had no licensers. Every book should bear the printer's
name, and 'mischievous and libellous books' were to be burnt by the
common hangman, not as an effectual remedy, but as the 'most effectual
remedy man's prevention can use.'
The noblest pamphlet in 'our English, the language of men ever famous and
foremost in the achievements of liberty,' accomplished nothing, and its
author must already have thought himself fallen on evil days.
In the year 1645, the year of Naseby, as Mr. Pattison reminds us,
appeared the first edition of Milton's Poems. Then, for the first time,
were printed _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, the _Ode on the Morning of
Christ's Nativity_, and various of the sonnets. The little volume also
contained _Comus_ and _Lycidas_, which had been previously printed. With
the exception of three sonnets and a few scraps of translation, Milton
had written nothing but pamphlets since his return from Italy. At the
beginning of the volume, which is a small octavo, was a portrait of the
poet, most villainously executed. He was really thirty-seven, but
flattered himself, as men of that age will, that he looked ten years
younger; he was therefore much chagrined to find himself represented as a
grim-looking gentleman of at least fifty. The way he revenged himself
upon the hapless artist is well known. The volume, with the portrait, is
now very scarce, almost rare.
In 1647 Milton removed from the Barbican, both his father and his father-
in-law being dead, to a smaller house in Holborn, backing upon Lincoln's
Inn Fields, close to where the Inns of Court Hotel now stands, and not
far from the spot which was destined to witness the terrible tragedy
which was at once to darken and glorify the life of one of Milton's most
fervent lovers, Charles Lamb. About this time he is supposed to have
abandoned pedagogy. The habit of pamphleteering stuck to him; indeed, it
is one seldom thrown off. It is much easier to throw off the pamphlets.
In 1649 Milton became a public servant, receiving the appointment of
Latin Secretary to the Council of Foreign Affairs. He knew some member
of the Committee, who obtained his nomination. His duties were purely
clerkly. It was his business to translate English despatches into Latin,
and foreign despatches into English. He had nothing whatever to do with
the shaping of the foreign policy of the Commonwealth. He was not even
employed in translating the most important of the State papers. There is
no reason for supposing that he even knew the leading politicians of his
time. There is a print one sees about, representing Oliver Cromwell
dictating a foreign despatch to John Milton; but it is all imagination,
nor is there anything to prove that Cromwell and Milton, the body and
soul of English Republicanism, were ever in the same room together, or
exchanged words with one another. Milton's name does not occur in the
great history of Lord Clarendon. Whitelocke, who was the leading member
of the Committee which Milton served, only mentions him once. Thurloe
spoke of him as a blind man who wrote Latin letters. Richard Baxter, in
his folio history of his Life and Times, never mentions Milton at all.
{27} He was just a clerk in the service of the Commonwealth, of a
scholarly bent, peculiar habit of thought, and somewhat of an odd temper.
He was not the man to cultivate great acquaintances, or to flitter away
his time waiting the convenience of other people. When once asked to use
his influence to obtain for a friend an appointment, he replied he had no
influence, '_propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis_, _qui
domi fere_, _idque libenter_, _me contineo_.' The busy great men of the
day would have been more than astonished, they would have been disgusted,
had they been told that posterity would refer to most of them
compendiously, as having lived in the age of Milton. But this need not
trouble us.
On the Continent Milton enjoyed a wider reputation, on account of his
controversy with the great European scholar, Salmasius, on the
sufficiently important and interesting, and then novel, subject of the
execution of Charles I. Was it justifiable? Salmasius, a scholar and a
Protestant, though of an easy-going description, was employed, or rather,
as he had no wages (Milton's hundred _Jacobuses_ being fictitious),
nominated by Charles, afterwards the Second, to indict the regicides at
the bar of European opinion, which accordingly he did in the Latin
language. The work reached this country in the autumn of 1649, and it
evidently became the duty of somebody to answer it. Two qualifications
were necessary--the replier must be able to read Latin, and to write it
after a manner which should escape the ridicule of the scholars of
Leyden, Geneva, and Paris. Milton occurred to somebody's mind, and the
task was entrusted to him. It is not to be supposed that Cromwell was
ever at the pains to read Salmasius for himself, but still it would not
have done to have it said that the _Defensio Regia_ of so celebrated a
scholar as Salmasius remained unanswered, and so the appointment was
confirmed, and Milton, no new hand at a pamphlet, set to work. In March,
1651, his first _Defence of the English People_ was in print. In this
great pamphlet Milton asserts, as against the doctrine of the divine
right of kings, the undisputed sovereignty of the people; and he
maintains the proposition that, as well by the law of God, as by the law
of nations, and the law of England, a king of England may be brought to
trial and death, the people being discharged from all obligations of
loyalty when a lawful prince becomes a tyrant, or gives himself over to
sloth and voluptuousness. This noble argument, alike worthy of the man
and the occasion, is doubtless over-clouded and disfigured by personal
abuse of Salmasius, whose relations with his wife had surely as little to
do with the head of Charles I. as had poor Mr. Dick's memorial.
Salmasius, it appears, was henpecked, and to allow yourself to be
henpecked was, in Milton's opinion, a high crime and misdemeanour against
humanity, and one which rendered a man infamous, and disqualified him
from taking part in debate.
It has always been reported that Salmasius, who was getting on in years,
and had many things to trouble him besides his own wife, perished in the
effort of writing a reply to Milton, in which he made use of language
quite as bad as any of his opponent's; but it now appears that this is
not so. Indeed, it is generally rash to attribute a man's death to a
pamphlet, or an article, either of his own or anybody else's.
Salmasius, however, died, though from natural causes, and his reply was
not published till after the Restoration, when the question had become,
what it has ever since remained, academical.
Other pens were quicker, and to their productions Milton, in 1654,
replied with his _Second Defence of the English People_, a tract
containing autobiographical details of immense interest and charm. By
this time he was totally blind, though, with a touch of that personal
sensitiveness ever characteristic of him, he is careful to tell Europe,
in the _Second Defence_, that externally his eyes were uninjured, and
shone with an unclouded light.
Milton's _Defences of the English People_ are rendered provoking by his
extraordinary language concerning his opponents. 'Numskull,' 'beast,'
'fool,' 'puppy,' 'knave,' 'ass,' 'mongrel-cur,' are but a few of the
epithets employed. This is doubtless mere matter of pleading, a rule of
the forum where controversies between scholars are conducted; but for
that very reason it makes the pamphlets as provoking to an ordinary
reader as an old bill of complaint in Chancery must have been to an
impatient suitor who wanted his money. The main issues, when cleared of
personalities, are important enough, and are stated by Milton with great
clearness. 'Our king made not us, but we him. Nature has given fathers
to us all, but we ourselves appointed our own king; so that the people is
not for the king, but the king for them.' It was made a matter of great
offence amongst monarchs and monarchical persons that Charles was subject
to the indignity of a trial. With murders and poisonings kings were long
familiar. These were part of the perils of the voyage, for which they
were prepared, but, as Salmasius put it, 'for a king to be arraigned in a
court of judicature, to be put to plead for his life, to have sentence of
death pronounced against him, and that sentence executed,'--oh! horrible
impiety. To this Milton replies: 'Tell me, thou superlative fool,
whether it be not more just, more agreeable to the rules of humanity and
the laws of all human societies, to bring a criminal, be his offence what
it will, before a court of justice, to give him leave to speak for
himself, and if the law condemns him, then to put him to death as he has
deserved, so as he may have time to repent or to recollect himself; than
presently, as soon as ever he is taken, to butcher him without more ado?'
But a king of any spirit would probably answer that he preferred to have
his despotism tempered by assassination than by the mercy of a court of
John Miltons. To which answer Milton would have rejoined, 'Despotism, I
know you not, since we are as free as any people under heaven.'
The weakest part in Milton's case is his having to admit that the
Parliament was overawed by the army, which he says was wiser than the
senators.
Milton's address to his countrymen, with which he concludes the first
defence, is veritably in his grand style:
'He has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, from the two
greatest mischiefs of this life--tyranny and superstition. He has
endued you with greatness of mind to be First of Mankind, who after
having confined their own king and having had him delivered into their
hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and pursuant to
that sentence of condemnation to put him to death. After performing
so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that's mean and
little; you ought not to think of, much less do, anything but what is
great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you
have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make it appear that you
of all mankind are best able to subdue Ambition, Avarice, the love of
Riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to
introduce. These are the only arguments by which you will be able to
evince that you are not such persons as this fellow represents you,
traitors, robbers, murderers, parricides, madmen, that you did not put
your king to death out of any ambitious design--that it was not an act
of fury or madness, but that it was wholly out of love to your
liberty, your religion, to justice, virtue, and your country, that you
punished a tyrant. But if it should fall out otherwise (which God
forbid), if, as you have been valiant in war, you should grow
debauched in peace, and that you should not have learnt, by so
eminent, so remarkable an example before your eyes, to fear God, and
work righteousness; for my part I shall easily grant and confess (for
I cannot deny it), whatever ill men may speak or think of you, to be
very true. And you will find in time that God's displeasure against
you will be greater than it has been against your adversaries--greater
than His grace and favour have been to yourseves, which you have had
larger experience of than any other nation under heaven.'
This controversy naturally excited greater interest abroad, where Latin
was familiarly known, than ever it did here at home. Though it cost
Milton his sight, or at all events accelerated the hour of his blindness,
he appears greatly to have enjoyed conducting a high dispute in the face
of Europe. 'I am,' so he says, 'spreading abroad amongst the cities, the
kingdoms, and nations, the restored culture of civility and freedom of
life.' We certainly managed in this affair of the execution of Charles
to get rid of that note of insularity which renders our politics
uninviting to the stranger.
Milton, despite his blindness, remained in the public service until after
the death of Cromwell; in fact, he did not formally resign until after
the Restoration. He played no part, having none to play, in the
performances that occurred between those events. He poured forth
pamphlets, but there is no reason to believe that they were read
otherwise than carelessly and by few. His ideas were his own, and never
had a chance of becoming fruitful. There seemed to him to be a ready and
an easy way to establish a free Commonwealth, but on the whole it turned
out that the easiest thing to do was to invite Charles Stuart to reascend
the throne of his ancestors, which he did, and Milton went into hiding.
It is terrible to think how risky the situation was. Milton was
undoubtedly in danger of his life, and _Paradise Lost_ was unwritten. He
was for a time under arrest. But after all he was not one of the
regicides--he was only a scribe who had defended regicide. Neither was
he a man well associated. He was a solitary, and, for the most part, an
unpopular thinker, and blind withal. He was left alone for the rest of
his days. He lived first in Jewin Street, off Aldersgate Street; and
finally in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. He had married, four years
after his first wife's death, a lady who died within a twelvemonth,
though her memory is kept ever fresh, generation after generation, by her
husband's sonnet beginning,
'Methought I saw my late espoused saint.'
Dr. Johnson, it is really worth remembering, called this a poor sonnet.
In 1664 Milton married a third and last wife, a lady he had never seen,
and who survived her husband for no less a period than fifty-three years,
not dying till the year 1727. The poet's household, like his country,
never realized any of his ideals. His third wife took decent care of
him, and there the matter ended. He did not belong to the category of
adored fathers. His daughters did not love him--it seems even probable
they disliked him. Mr. Pattison has pointed out that Milton never was on
terms even with the scholars of his age. Political acquaintances he had
none. He was, in Puritan language, 'unconnected with any place of
worship,' and had therefore no pastoral visits to receive, or sermons to
discuss. The few friends he had were mostly young men who were attracted
to him, and were glad to give him their company; and it is well that he
had this pleasure, for he was ever in his wishes a social man--not
intended to live alone, and blindness must have made society little short
of a necessity for him.
Now it was, in the evening of his days, with a Stuart once more upon the
throne, and Episcopacy finally installed, that Milton, a defeated
thinker, a baffled pamphleteer--for had not Salmasius triumphed?--with
Horton and Italy far, far behind him, set himself to keep the promise of
his glorious youth, and compose a poem the world should not willingly let
die. His manner of life was this. In summer he rose at four, in winter
at five. He went to bed at nine. He began the day with having the
Hebrew Scriptures read to him. Then he contemplated. At seven his man
came to him again, and he read and wrote till an early dinner. For
exercise he either walked in the garden or swung in a machine. Besides
conversation, his only other recreation was music. He played the organ
and the bass viol. He would sometimes sing himself. After recreation of
this kind he would return to his study to be read to till six. After six
his friends were admitted, and would sit with him till eight. At eight
he had his supper--olives or something light. He was very abstemious.
After supper he smoked a pipe of tobacco, drank a glass of water, and
went to bed. He found the night a favourable time for composition, and
what he composed at night he dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an
elbow chair with his leg thrown over the arm.
In 1664 _Paradise Lost_ was finished, but as in 1665 came the Great
Plague, and after the Great Plague the Great Fire, it was long before the
MS. found its way into the hands of the licenser. It is interesting to
note that the first member of the general public who read _Paradise
Lost_, I hope all through, was a clergyman of the name of Tomkyns, the
deputy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sheldon. The Archbishop was
the State Licenser for religious books, but of course did not do the work
himself. Tomkyns did the work, and was for a good while puzzled what to
make of the old Republican's poem. At last, and after some singularly
futile criticisms, Tomkyns consented to allow the publication of
_Paradise Lost_, which accordingly appeared in 1667, admirably printed,
and at the price of 3_s._ a copy. The author's agreement with the
publisher is in writing--as Mr. Besant tells us all agreements with
publishers should be--and may be seen in the British Museum. Its terms
are clear. The poet was to have 5 down pounds; another 5 pounds when the
first edition, which was not to exceed 1,500 copies, was sold; a third 5
pounds when a second edition was sold; and a fourth and last 5 pounds
when a third edition was sold. He got his first 5 pounds, also his
second, and after his death his widow sold all her rights for 5 pounds.
Consequently 18 pounds, which represents perhaps 50 pounds of our present
currency, was Milton's share of all the money that has been made by the
sale of his great poem. But the praise is still his. The sale was very
considerable. The 'general reader' no doubt preferred the poems of
Cleaveland and Flatman, but Milton found an audience which was fit and
not fewer than ever is the case when noble poetry is first produced.
_Paradise Regained_ was begun upon the completion of _Paradise Lost_, and
appeared with _Samson Agonistes_ in 1671, and here ended Milton's life as
a producing poet. He lived on till Sunday, 8th November, 1674, when the
gout, or what was then called gout, struck in and he died, and was buried
beside his father in the Church of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. He remained
laborious to the last, and imposed upon himself all kinds of drudgery,
compiling dictionaries, histories of Britain and Russia. He must have
worked not so much from love of his subjects as from dread of idleness.
But he had hours of relaxation, of social intercourse, and of music; and
it is pleasant to remember that one pipe of tobacco. It consecrates your
own.
Against Milton's great poem it is sometimes alleged that it is not read;
and yet it must, I think, be admitted that for one person who has read
Spenser's _Fairy Queen_, ten thousand might easily be found who have read
_Paradise Lost_. Its popularity has been widespread. Mr. Mark Pattison
and Mr. John Bright measure some ground between them. No other poem can
be mentioned which has so coloured English thought as Milton's, and yet,
according to the French senator whom Mr. Arnold has introduced to the
plain reader, '_Paradise Lost_ is a false poem, a grotesque poem, a
tiresome poem.' It is not easy for those who have a touch of Milton's
temper, though none of his genius, to listen to this foreign criticism
quite coolly. Milton was very angry with Salmasius for venturing to find
fault with the Long Parliament for having repealed so many laws, and so
far forgot himself as to say, '_Nam nostrae leges_, _Ole_, _quid ad te_?'
But there is nothing municipal about _Paradise Lost_. All the world has
a right to be interested in it and to find fault with it. But the fact
that the people for whom primarily it was written have taken it to their
hearts and have it on their lips ought to have prevented it being called
tiresome by a senator of France.
But what is the matter with our great epic? That nobody ever wished it
longer is no real accusation. Nobody ever did wish an epic longer. The
most popular books in the world are generally accounted too long--_Don
Quixote_, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, _Tom Jones_. But, says Mr. Arnold,
the whole real interest of the poem depends upon our being able to take
it literally; and again, 'Merely as matter of poetry, the story of the
Fall has no special force or effectiveness--its effectiveness for us
comes, and can only come, from our taking it all as the literal narrative
of what positively happened.' These bewildering utterances make one rub
one's eyes. Carlyle comes to our relief: 'All which propositions I for
the present content myself with modestly, but peremptorily and
irrevocably denying.'
Mr. Pattison surely speaks the language of ordinary good sense when he
writes: 'For the world of _Paradise Lost_ is an ideal, conventional world
quite as much as the world of the _Arabian Nights_, or the world of the
chivalrous romance, or that of the pastoral novel.'
Coleridge, in the twenty-second chapter of the _Biographia Literaria_,
points out that the fable and characters of _Paradise Lost_ are not
derived from Scripture, as in the _Messiah_ of Klopstock, but merely
suggested by it--the illusion on which all poetry is founded being thus
never contradicted. The poem proceeds upon a legend, ancient and
fascinating, and to call it a commentary upon a few texts in Genesis is a
marvellous criticism.
The story of the Fall of Man, as recorded in the Semitic legend, is to me
more attractive as a story than the Tale of Troy, and I find the
rebellion of Satan and his dire revenge more to my mind than the circles
of Dante. Eve is, I think, more interesting than 'Heaven-born Helen,
Sparta's queen'--I mean in herself, and as a woman to write poetry about.
The execution of the poem is another matter. So far as style is
concerned its merits have not yet been questioned. As a matter of style
and diction, Milton is as safe as Virgil. The handling of the story is
more vulnerable. The long speeches put in the mouth of the Almighty are
never pleasing, and seldom effective. The weak point about argument is
that it usually admits of being answered. For Milton to essay to justify
the ways of God to man was well and pious enough, but to represent God
Himself as doing so by argumentative process was not so well, and was to
expose the Almighty to possible rebuff. The king is always present in
his own courts, but as judge, not as advocate; hence the royal dignity
never suffers.
It is narrated of an eminent barrister, who became a most polished judge,
Mr. Knight Bruce, that once, when at the very head of his profession, he
was taken in before a Master in Chancery, an office since abolished, and
found himself pitted against a little snip of an attorney's clerk, scarce
higher than the table, who, nothing daunted, and by the aid of
authorities he cited from a bundle of books as big as himself, succeeded
in worsting Knight Bruce, whom he persisted in calling over again and
again 'my learned friend.' Mr. Bruce treated the imp with that courtesy
which is always an opponent's due, but he never went before the Masters
any more.
The Archangel has not escaped the reproach often brought against affable
persons of being a bit of a bore, and though this is to speak
unbecomingly, it must be owned that the reader is glad whenever Adam
plucks up heart of grace and gets in a word edgeways. Mr. Bagehot has
complained of Milton's angels. He says they are silly. But this is, I
think, to intellectualize too much. There are some classes who are
fairly exempted from all obligation to be intelligent, and these airy
messengers are surely amongst that number. The retinue of a prince or of
a bride justify their choice if they are well-looking and group nicely.
But these objections do not touch the main issue. Here is the story of
the loss of Eden, told enchantingly, musically, and in the grand style.
'Who,' says M. Scherer, in a passage quoted by Mr. Arnold, 'can read the
eleventh and twelfth books without yawning?' People, of course, are free
to yawn when they please, provided they put their hands to their mouths;
but in answer to this insulting question one is glad to be able to
remember how Coleridge has singled out Adam's vision of future events
contained in these books as especially deserving of attention. But to
read them is to repel the charge.
There was no need for Mr. Arnold, of all men, to express dissatisfaction
with Milton:
'Words which no ear ever to hear in heaven
Expected; least of all from thee, ingrate,
In place thyself so high above thy peers.'
The first thing for people to be taught is to enjoy great things greatly.
The spots on the sun may be an interesting study, but anyhow the sun is
not all spots. Indeed, sometimes in the early year, when he breaks forth
afresh,
'And winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring,
we are apt to forget that he has any spots at all, and, as he shines, are
perhaps reminded of the blind poet sitting in his darkness, in this
prosaic city of ours, swinging his leg over the arm of his chair, and
dictating the lines:
'Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose,
Or flocks or herds, or human face divine.
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me--from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off; and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature's works, to me expunged and razed
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather, Thou, Celestial Light,
Shine inwards, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate--_there_ plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.'
Coleridge added a note to his beautiful poem, 'The Nightingale,' lest he
should be supposed capable of speaking with levity of a single line in
Milton. The note was hardly necessary, but one loves the spirit that
prompted him to make it. Sainte-Beuve remarks: 'Parler des poetes est
toujours une chose bien delicate, et surtout quand on l'a ete un peu soi-
meme.' But though it does not matter what the little poets do, great
ones should never pass one another without a royal salute.