messenger-paper has brought me your words—brought me them
from the western shore of Chester's Dee, where with prone
stream it seeks the Vergivian wave. Much, believe me, it
delights me that foreign lands have nurtured a heart so loving
of ours, and a head so faithfully mine; and that a distant
part of the country now owes me my sprightly companion,
whence, however, it means soon, on being summoned, to send him
back. Me at present that city contains which the Thames washes
with its ebbing wave; and me, not unwilling, my father's house
now possesses. At present it is not my care to revisit the
reedy Cam; nor does the love of my forbidden rooms yet cause
me grief (_nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor_). Nor do
naked fields please me, where soft shades are not to be had.
How ill that place suits the votaries of Apollo! Nor am I in
the humour still to bear the threats of a harsh master (_duri
minas perferre magistri_), and other things not to be
submitted to by my genius (_cæteraque ingenio non subeunda
meo_). If this be exile (_si sit hoc exilium_), to have gone
to my father's house, and, free from cares, to be pursuing
agreeable relaxations, then certainly I refuse neither the
name nor the lot of a fugitive (_non ego vel profugi nomen
sortemque recuso_), and gladly I enjoy the condition of exile
(_lætus et exilii conditione fruor_). Oh that that poet, the
tearful exile in the Pontic territory had never endured worse
things! Then had he nothing yielded to Ionian Homer, nor would
the supreme reputation of having surpassed him be yours, O
Maro! For it is in my power to give my leisure up to the
placid Muses; and books, which are my life, have me all to
themselves. When I am wearied, the pomp of the winding theatre
takes me hence, and the garrulous stage calls me to its noisy
applauses—whether it be the wary old gentleman that is heard,
or the prodigal heir; whether the wooer, or the soldier with
his helmet doffed, is on the boards, or the lawyer, prosperous
with a ten years' lawsuit, is mouthing forth his gibberish to
the unlearned forum. Often the wily servant is abetting the
lover-son, and at every turn cheating the very nose of the
stiff father; often there the maiden, wondering at her new
sensations, knows not what love is, and, while she knows not,
loves. Or, again, furious Tragedy shakes her bloody sceptre
and rolls her eyes, with dishevelled locks, and it is a pain
to look, and yet it is a pleasure to have looked and been
pained; for sometimes there is a sweet bitterness in tears. Or
the unhappy boy leaves his untasted joys, and falls off, a
pitiful object, from his broken love; or the fierce avenger of
crime recrosses the Styx from the shades, perturbing guilty
souls with his funeral torch. Or the house of Pelops or that
of noble Ilium is in grief, or the palace of Creon expiates
its incestuous ancestry. But not always within doors, nor even
in the city, do we mope; nor does the season of spring pass by
unused by us. The grove also planted with thick elms, has our
company, and the noble shade of a suburban neighborhood. Very
often here, as stars breathing forth mild flames, you may see
troops of maidens passing by. Ah! how often have I seen the
wonders of a worthy form, which might even repair the old age
of Jove! Ah! how often have I seen eyes surpassing all gems
and whatever lights revolve round either pole; and necks twice
whiter than the arms of living Pelops, and than the way which
flows tinged with pure nectar; and the exquisite grace of the
forehead; and the trembling hair which cheating love spreads
as his golden nets; and the inviting cheeks, compared with
which hyacinthine purple is poor, and the very blush, Adonis,
of thy own flower! . . . But for me, while the forbearance of
the blind boy allows it, I prepare as soon as possible to
leave these happy walls, and, using the help of divine
all-heal, to flee far from the infamous dwellings of the
sorceress Circe. It is fixed that I do go back to the rushy
marshes of Cam, and once more approach the murmur of the
hoarse-murmuring school. Meanwhile accept the little gift of
your faithful friend, and these few words forced into
alternate measures.
_To Alexander Gill, Jr._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. III.)
. . . Indeed, every time I recollect your almost constant
conversations with me (which even in this Athens, the
University itself, I long after and miss), I think
immediately, and not without grief, what a quantity of benefit
my absence from you has cheated me of,—me who never left
your company without a manifest increase and ἐπίδοσις of
literary knowledge, just as if I had been to some emporium of
learning. Truly, amongst us here, as far as I know, there are
hardly one or two that do not fly off unfeathered to Theology
while all but rude and uninitiated in either Philology or
Philosophy,—content also with the slightest possible touch of
Theology itself, just as much as may suffice for sticking
together a little sermon anyhow, and stitching it over with
worn patches obtained promiscuously: a fact giving reason for
the dread that by degrees there may break in among our clergy
the priestly ignorance of a former age. For myself, finding
almost no real companions in study here, I should certainly be
looking straight back to London, were I not meditating a
retirement during this summer vacation into a deep literary
leisure and a period of hiding, so to speak, in the bowers of
the Muses. But, as this is your own daily practice, I think
it almost a crime to interrupt you longer with my din at
present. Farewell.
CAMBRIDGE, July 2, 1628.
_To Thomas Young._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. IV.)
. . . Having been invited to your part of the country, as soon
as spring is a little advanced, I will gladly come, to enjoy
the delights of the season, and not less of your conversation,
and will withdraw myself from the din of town for a while to
your Stoa of the Iceni, as to that most celebrated Porch of
Zeno or the Tusculan Villa of Cicero, where you, with moderate
means but regal spirit, like some Serranus or Curius, placidly
reign in your little farm, and, contemning fortune, hold, as
it were, a triumph over riches, ambition, pomp, luxury, and
whatever the herd of men admire and are marked by. . . .
CAMBRIDGE, July 21, 1628.
_To Charles Diodati_,
making a stay in the country, who, having written to the author on the
13th of December, and asked him to excuse his verses, if they were less
good than usual, on the ground that, in the midst of the festivities
with which he had been received by his friends, he was unable to give a
sufficiently prosperous attention to the Muses, had the following reply:
. . . You seem to be enjoying yourself rarely. How well you
describe the feasts, and the merry December and preparations
for Christmas, and the cups of French wine round the gay
hearth! Why do you complain that poesy is absent from these
festivities? Festivity and poetry are surely not
incompatible. . . . One sees the triple influence of Bacchus,
Apollo, and Ceres, in the verses you have sent me. And, then,
have you not music—the harp lightly touched by nimble hands,
and the lute giving time to the fair ones as they dance in the
old tapestried room? Believe me, where the ivory keys leap,
and the accompanying dance goes round the perfumed hall, there
will the Song-god be. But let me not go too far. Light Elegy
is the care of many gods, and calls any one of them by turns
to her assistance—Bacchus, Erato, Ceres, Venus, and little
Cupid besides. To poets of this order, therefore, conviviality
is allowable; and they may often indulge in draughts of good
old wine. _But the man who speaks of high matters—the heaven
of the full-grown Jove, and pious heroes, and demigod leaders
of men, the man who now sings the holy counsels of the gods
above, and now the subterranean realms guarded by the fierce
dog—let him live sparely, after the manner of the Samian
master; let herbs afford him his innocent diet, let clear
water in a beechen cup stand near him, and let him drink sober
draughts from a pure fountain! To this be there added a youth
chaste and free from guilt, and rigid morals, and hands
without stain. Being such, thou shalt rise up, glittering in
sacred raiment and purified by lustral waters, an augur about
to go into the presence of the unoffended gods._ So is wise
Tiresias said to have lived, after he had been deprived of his
sight; and Theban Linus; and Calchas the exile; and old
Orpheus. So did the scantily-eating, water-drinking Homer
carry his hero Ulysses through the monster-teeming hall of
Circe, and the straits insidious with the voices of the
Syrens, and through thy courts, too, O infernal King, where he
is said to have held the troops of shades enthralled by
libations of black blood. For the poet is sacred and the
priest of the gods; and his breast and his mouth breathe the
indwelling Jove.
And now, if you will know what I am myself doing (if indeed
you think it is of so much consequence to know if I am doing
anything), here is the fact: we are engaged in singing the
heavenly birth of the King of Peace, and the happy age
promised by the holy books, and the infant cries and cradling
in a manger under a poor roof of that God who rules, with his
Father, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the sky with the new-sprung
star in it, and the ethereal choirs of hymning angels, and the
gods of the heathen suddenly fleeing to their endangered
fanes. This is the gift which we have presented to Christ's
natal day. On that very morning, at daybreak, it was first
conceived. The verses, which are composed in the vernacular,
await you in close keeping; you shall be the judge to whom I
shall recite them.
_Prolusiones quædam Oratoriæ_
Some University Latin Oratorical Exercises, seven in number, first
published in 1674, the year of Milton's death, along with his Familiar
Letters (Epistolæ Familiares), 'as a make-weight to counterbalance the
paucity of the Letters,' have an autobiographic value; but, with the
exception of a small bit, space does not allow the admission of them
here. 'They throw light,' says Masson, 'upon Milton's career at
Cambridge. They illustrate the extent and nature of his reading, his
habits and tastes as a student, the relation in which he stood to the
University system of his time, and to the new intellectual tendencies
which were gradually affecting that system. They also settle in the most
conclusive manner the fact that Milton passed through two stages in his
career at the University,—a stage of decided unpopularity, in his own
College at least, which lasted till about 1628, and a final stage of
triumph, when his powers were recognized.'
Masson characterizes the seventh oratorical exercise as 'one of the
finest pieces of Latin prose ever penned by an Englishman.'
The following is a passage, in Masson's close translation, from this
exercise, which exhibits what continued to be Milton's attitude through
life:
'I regard it, my hearers, as known and accepted by all, that the great
Maker of the Universe, when he had constituted all things else as
fleeting and corruptible, did mingle up with Man, in addition to that of
him which is mortal, a certain divine breath, as it were part of
Himself, immortal, indestructible, free from death and extinction;
which, after it had sojourned purely and holily for some time in the
earth as a heavenly guest, should flutter aloft to its native heaven,
and return to its proper home and fatherland: accordingly, that _nothing
can deservedly be taken into account as among the causes of our
happiness that does not somehow or other regard both that everlasting
life and this civil life below_.'
'When his earlier writings,' says Masson, 'are compared with those of
his coevals at the University, what strikes one most, next to their
vastly greater merit altogether, is their more ideal tone. As, more than
any of them, he was conscious of the _os magna soniturum_, the mouth
formed for great utterances, so all that he does utter has a certain
character and form of magnitude.'
Milton's Latin poem, 'Ad Patrem' (To Father), was occasioned, as may be
seen in the poem, by an expressed dissatisfaction on the part of his
father with his continued devotion, after leaving the University, to his
favorite studies and the Muses, to the exclusion of all consideration of
a profession. He had, while yet at the University, fully decided that
the Church, for which he was destined by his parents, was not for him,
bowing, as it was, beneath the galling 'yoke of prelaty'; and to the
legal profession he must have been equally, if not more, averse.
Such a tribute of filial affection and gratitude, as is this poem,
certainly overcame all objections the father may have expressed in
regard to his course of life at the time.
We learn from this poem, which was no doubt composed soon after Milton's
final return to his father's house at Horton, in 1632, he being then in
his twenty-fourth year, that, along with the Latin and the Greek, he had
acquired, and by his father's advice, a knowledge of the French,
Italian, and Hebrew. We also learn of the father's musical genius, both
instrumental and vocal, and of the son's lofty estimate of the power of
poesy. He ascribes to it a divine nature which evidences man's heavenly
origin, and bespeaks him illuminated from above.
I give the translation by the poet Cowper, which, while being somewhat
free, is, I think, altogether the best and most poetical that has been
made. That by Masson, in hexameters, is closer to the original, but has
in it a dactylic dance which is not so much in harmony with the tone of
the original as is Cowper's blank-verse translation.
_To Father_
Oh, that Pieria's spring would thro' my breast
Pour its inspiring influence, and rush
No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood!
That, for my venerable father's sake,
All meaner themes renounced, my muse, on wings 5
Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain.
For thee, my father! howsoe'er it please,
She frames this slender work, nor know I aught
That may thy gifts more suitably requite;
Though to requite them suitably would ask 10
Returns much nobler, and surpassing far
The meagre stores of verbal gratitude;
But, such as I possess, I send thee all.
This page presents thee in their full amount
With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought; 15
Nought, save the riches that from airy dream
In secret grottos and in laurel bowers
I have, by golden Clio's gift, acquired.
Verse is a work divine; despise not thou
Verse, therefore, which evinces (nothing more) 20
Man's heavenly source, and which, retaining still
Some scintillations of Promethean fire,
Bespeaks him animated from above.
The gods love verse; the infernal Powers themselves
Confess the influence of verse, which stirs 25
The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains
Of adamant both Pluto and the Shades.
In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale
Tremulous Sibyl make the future known;
And he who sacrifices, on the shrine 30
Hangs verse, both when he smites the threatening bull,
And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide
To scrutinize the Fates enveloped there.
We, too, ourselves, what time we seek again
Our native skies, and one eternal now 35
Shall be the only measure of our being,
Crowned all with gold, and chaunting to the lyre
Harmonious verse, shall range the courts above,
And make the starry firmament resound;
And, even now, the fiery spirit pure 40
That wheels yon circling orbs, directs, himself,
Their mazy dance with melody of verse
Unutterable, immortal, hearing which
Huge Ophiuchus holds his hiss suppressed,
Orion, softened, drops his ardent blade, 45
And Atlas stands unconscious of his load.
Verse graced of old the feasts of kings ere yet
Luxurious dainties, destined to the gulph
Immense of gluttony, were known, and ere
Lyæus deluged yet the temperate board. 50
Then sat the bard a customary guest
To share the banquet, and, his length of locks
With beechen honours bound, proposed in verse
The characters of heroes, and their deeds
To imitation, sang of Chaos old, sword, belt, and club; 55
Of nature's birth, of gods that crept in search
Of acorns fallen, and of the thunder bolt
Not yet produced from Etna's fiery cave.
And what avails, at last, tune without voice,
Devoid of matter? Such may suit perhaps 60
The rural dance, but such was ne'er the song
Of Orpheus, whom the streams stood still to hear
And the oaks followed. Not by chords alone
Well touched, but by resistless accents more
To sympathetic tears the ghosts themselves 65
He moved; these praises to his verse he owes.
Nor thou persist, I pray thee, still to slight
The sacred Nine, and to imagine vain
And useless, powers by whom inspired thyself
Art skilful to associate verse with airs 70
Harmonious, and to give the human voice
A thousand modulations, heir by right
Indisputable of Arion's fame.
Now say, what wonder is it if a son
Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoined 75
In close affinity, we sympathize
In social arts and kindred studies sweet?
Such distribution of himself to us
Was Phœbus' choice; thou hast thy gift and I
Mine also; and between us we receive, 80
Father and son, the whole inspiring god.
No! howsoe'er the semblance thou assume
Of hate, thou hatest not the gentle Muse,
My Father! for thou never bad'st me tread
The beaten path and broad that leads right on 85
To opulence, nor didst condemn thy son
To the insipid clamours of the bar,
To laws voluminous and ill observed;
But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill
My mind with treasure, ledst me far away 90
From city din to deep retreats, to banks
And streams Aonian, and, with free consent,
Didst place me happy at Apollo's side.
I speak not now, on more important themes
Intent, of common benefits and such 95
As nature bids, but of thy larger gifts,
My Father! who, when I had opened once
The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learned
The full-toned language of the eloquent Greeks,
Whose lofty music graced the lips of Jove, 100
Thyself didst counsel me to add the flowers
That Gallia boasts, those, too, with which the smooth
Italian his degenerate speech adorns,
That witnesses his mixture with the Goth;
And Palestine's prophetic songs divine. 105
To sum the whole, whate'er the heaven contains,
The earth beneath it, and the air between,
The rivers and the restless deep, may all
Prove intellectual gain to me, my wish
Concurring with thy will; Science herself, 110
All cloud removed, inclines her beauteous head,
And offers me the lip, if, dull of heart,
I shrink not and decline her gracious boon.
Go now and gather dross, ye sordid minds
That covet it; what could my Father more? 115
What more could Jove himself, unless he gave
His own abode, the heaven, in which he reigns?
More eligible gifts than these were not
Apollo's to his son, had they been safe,
As they were insecure, who made the boy 120
The world's vice-luminary, bade him rule
The radiant chariot of the day, and bind
To his young brows his own all-dazzling wreath.
I, therefore, although last and least, my place
Among the learned in the laurel grove 125
Will hold, and where the conqueror's ivy twines,
Henceforth exempt from the unlettered throng
Profane, nor even to be seen by such.
Away then, sleepless Care, Complaint away,
And Envy, with thy 'jealous leer malign!' 130
Nor let the monster Calumny shoot forth
Her venomed tongue at me. Detested foes!
Ye all are impotent against my peace,
For I am privileged, and bear my breast
Safe, and too high for your viperean wound. 135
But thou, my Father! since to render thanks
Equivalent, and to requite by deeds
Thy liberality, exceeds my power,
Suffice it that I thus record thy gifts,
And bear them treasured in a grateful mind! 140
Ye, too, the favourite pastime of my youth
My voluntary numbers, if ye dare
To hope longevity, and to survive
Your master's funeral, not soon absorbed
In the oblivious Lethæan gulph 145
Shall to futurity perhaps convey
This theme, and by these praises of my sire
Improve the Fathers of a distant age!
_An English letter to a friend (unknown), who, it appears, had been
calling him to account for his apparent indifference as to his work in
life_
This letter has an exceptional autobiographic value. The sonnet, which
is inserted, appears to have been independently written some time
before, and was originally published in 1645, with the heading 'On his
having arrived at the age of twenty-three.'
'SIR,—Besides that in sundry respects I must acknowledge me
to profit by you whenever we meet, you are often to me, and
were yesterday especially, as a good watchman to admonish that
the hours of the night pass on (for so I call my life, as yet
obscure and unserviceable to mankind), and that the day with
me is at hand, wherein Christ commands all to labor, while
there is light. Which, because I am persuaded you do to no
other purpose than out of a true desire that God should be
honoured in every one, I therefore think myself bound, though
unasked, to give you an account, as oft as occasion is, of
this my tardy moving, according to the precept of my
conscience, which I firmly trust is not without God. Yet now I
will not strain for any set apology, but only refer myself to
what my mind shall have at any time to declare herself at her
best ease.
But if you think, as you said, that too much love of learning
is in fault, and that I have given up myself to dream away my
years in the arms of studious retirement, like Endymion with
the moon, as the tale of Latmus goes, yet consider that, if it
were no more but the mere love of learning, whether it proceed
from a principle bad, good, or natural, it could not have held
out thus long against so strong opposition on the other side
of every kind. For, if it be bad, why should not all the fond
hopes that forward youth and vanity are fledge with, together
with gain, pride, and ambition, call me forward more
powerfully than a poor, regardless, and unprofitable sin of
curiosity should be able to withhold me; whereby a man cuts
himself off from all action, and becomes the most helpless,
pusillanimous, and unweaponed creature in the world, the most
unfit and unable to do that which all mortals most aspire to,
either to be useful to his friends or to offend his enemies?
Or, if it be to be thought a natural proneness, there is
against that a much more potent inclination inbred, which
about this time of a man's life solicits most—the desire of
house and family of his own; to which nothing is esteemed more
helpful than the early entering into credible employment, and
nothing hindering than this affected solitariness. And, though
this were enough, yet there is another act, if not of pure,
yet of refined nature, no less available to dissuade prolonged
obscurity—a desire of honour and repute and immortal fame,
seated in the breast of every true scholar; which all make
haste to by the readiest ways of publishing and divulging
conceived merits—as well those that shall, as those that
never shall, obtain it. Nature, therefore, would presently
work the more prevalent way, if there were nothing but this
inferior bent of herself to restrain her. Lastly, the love of
learning, as it is the pursuit of something good, it would
sooner follow the more excellent and supreme good known and
presented, and so be quickly diverted from the empty and
fantastic chase of shadows and notions, to the solid good
flowing from due and timely obedience to that command in the
Gospel set out by the terrible feasing of him that hid the
talent.
It is more probable, therefore, that not the endless delight
of speculation, but this very consideration of that great
commandment, does not press forward, as soon as many do, to
undergo, but keeps off, with a sacred reverence and religious
advisement how _best_ to undergo, not taking thought of being
_late_, so it give advantage to be more _fit_; for those that
were latest lost nothing when the master of the vineyard came
to give each one his hire. And here I am come to a streamhead,
copious enough to disburden itself, like Nilus, at seven
mouths into an ocean. But then I should also run into a
reciprocal contradiction of ebbing and flowing at once, and do
that which I excuse myself for not doing—preach and not
preach. Yet, that you may see that I am something suspicious
of myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me,
I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some
while since, because they come in not altogether unfitly, made
up in a Petrarchian stanza, which I told you of:
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.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth 5
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even 10
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven.
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
By this I believe you may well repent of having made mention
at all of this matter; for, if I have not all this while won
you to this, I have certainly wearied you of it. This,
therefore, alone may be a sufficient reason for me to keep me
as I am, lest, having thus tired you singly, I should deal
worse with a whole congregation and spoil all the patience of
a parish; for I myself do not only see my own tediousness, but
now grow offended with it, that has hindered me thus long from
coming to the last and best _period_ of my letter, and that
which must now chiefly work my pardon,—that I am
Your true and unfeigned friend, etc.'
_To Alexander Gill, Jr._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. V.)