writing, which I have used these eighteen years on all
occasions to assert the just rights and freedoms both of
church and state, and so far approved, as to have been trusted
with the representment and defence of your actions to all
Christendom against an adversary of no mean repute; to whom
should I address what I still publish on the same argument,
but to you, whose magnanimous councils first opened and
unbound the age from a double bondage under prelatical and
regal tyranny; above our own hopes heartening us to look up at
last, like men and Christians, from the slavish dejection,
wherein from father to son we were bred up and taught; and
thereby deserving of these nations, if they be not barbarously
ingrateful, to be acknowledged, next under God, the authors
and best patrons of religious and civil liberty, that ever
these islands brought forth? The care and tuition of whose
peace and safety, after a short but scandalous night of
interruption, is now again, by a new dawning of God's
miraculous providence among us, revolved upon your shoulders.
And to whom more appertain these considerations, which I
propound, than to yourselves, and the debate before you,
though I trust of no difficulty, yet at present of great
expectation, not whether ye will gratify, were it no more than
so, but whether ye will hearken to the just petition of many
thousands best affected both to religion and to this your
return, or whether ye will satisfy, which you never can, the
covetous pretences and demands of insatiable hirelings, whose
disaffection ye well know both to yourselves and your
resolutions? That I, though among many others in this common
concernment, interpose to your deliberations what my thoughts
also are; your own judgment and the success thereof hath given
me the confidence: which requests but this, that if I have
prosperously, God so favouring me, defended the public cause
of this commonwealth to foreigners, ye would not think the
reason and ability, whereon ye trusted once (and repent not)
your whole reputation to the world, either grown less by more
maturity and longer study, or less available in English than
in another tongue; but that if it sufficed some years past to
convince and satisfy the unengaged of other nations in the
justice of your doings, though then held paradoxal, it may as
well suffice now against weaker opposition in matters, except
here in England with a spirituality of men devoted to their
temporal gain, of no controversy else among protestants.
Neither do I doubt, seeing daily the acceptance which they
find who in their petitions venture to bring advice also, and
new models of a commonwealth, but that you will interpret it
much more the duty of a Christian to offer what his
conscience persuades him may be of moment to the freedom and
better constituting of the church: since it is a deed of
highest charity to help undeceive the people, and a work
worthiest your authority, in all things else authors,
assertors, and now recoverers of our liberty, to deliver us,
the only people of all protestants left still undelivered,
from the oppressions of a simonious decimating clergy, who
shame not, against the judgment and practice of all other
churches reformed, to maintain, though very weakly, their
popish and oft-refuted positions; not in a point of conscience
wherein they might be blameless, but in a point of
covetousness and unjust claim to other men's goods; a
contention foul and odious in any man, but most of all in
ministers of the gospel, in whom contention, though for their
own right, scarce is allowable. Till which grievances be
removed, and religion set free from the monopoly of hirelings,
I dare affirm that no model whatsoever of a commonwealth will
prove successful or undisturbed; and so persuaded, implore
divine assistance on your pious counsels and proceedings to
unanimity in this and all other truth.
—JOHN MILTON.
_Autobiographic passages in the 'Paradise Lost'_
'Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachèd light
Dwelt from eternity—dwelt then in thee, 5
Bright effluence of bright essence, increate!
Or hearest thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun,
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest 10
The rising World of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless Infinite!
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, 15
Through utter and through middle Darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphéan lyre
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,
Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend, 20
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, 25
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, 30
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, 35
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year 40
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 45
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 rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 50
So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,
Shine inward 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.' 55
—_Paradise Lost_, Book iii. 1-55.
'Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing!
The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou 5
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwell'st; but, heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared or fountain flowed,
Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play 10
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee,
Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy tempering. With like safety guided down, 15
Return me to my native element;
Lest, from this flying steed unreined (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime)
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander and forlorn. 20
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible Diurnal Sphere.
Standing on Earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, 25
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn
Purples the East. Still govern thou my song, 30
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears 35
To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou who thee implores;
For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream.'
—_Paradise Lost_, Book vii. 1-39.
'No more of talk where God or Angel Guest
With Man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change 5
Those notes to tragic—foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience; on the part of Heaven,
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, 10
That brought into this World a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery,
Death's harbinger. Sad task! yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued 15
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused;
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son;
If answerable style I can obtain 20
Of my celestial Patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse,
Since first this subject for heroic song 25
Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late,
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights 30
In battles feigned (the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung), or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, 35
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast
Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals:
The skill of artifice or office mean;
Not that which justly gives heroic name 40
To person or to poem! Me, of these
Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing 45
Depressed; and much they may if all be mine,
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.'
—_Paradise Lost_, Book ix. 1-47.
The following verses addressed to the seraph Abdiel, Milton, at the time
he wrote them, might justly have taken to himself:
'Servant of God, well done! Well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms,
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy care—
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse.'
—_Paradise Lost_, Book vi. 29-37.
Milton regarded himself as an Abdiel (_i.e._ as the name signifies in
Hebrew, Servant of God), in the past struggle for civil and religious
liberty; like Abdiel,
'Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;
Nor number nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single.'
—_Paradise Lost_, Book v. 898-903.
The following, from 'Paradise Regained,' Book i. 196-208, Milton might
have written of himself:
'Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once
Awakened in me swarm, while I consider
What from within I feel myself, and hear
What from without comes often to my ears,
Ill sorting with my present state compared!
When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing; _all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
What might be public good; myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
All righteous things_. Therefore, above my years,
The Law of God I read, and found it sweet;
Made it my whole delight.'
The following letter reveals the difficulties under which Milton, in his
blindness, was, at times, obliged to write.
_To the very distinguished Peter Heimbach, Councillor to the Elector of
Brandenburg._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XXXI.)
Small wonder if, in the midst of so many deaths of my
countrymen, in a year of such heavy pestilence, you believed,
as you write you did, on the faith of some special rumour,
that I also had been cut off. Such a rumour among your people
is not displeasing, if it was the occasion of making known the
fact that they were anxious for my safety, for then I can
regard it as a sign of their good will to me. But, by the
blessing of God, who had provided for my safety in a country
retreat, I am still both alive and well, nor useless yet, I
hope, for any duty that remains to be performed by me in this
life.—That after so long an interval I should have come into
your mind is very agreeable; although, from your exuberant
expression of the matter, you seem to afford some ground for
suspecting that you have rather forgotten me, professing as
you do such an admiration of the marriage-union in me of so
many different virtues. Truly, I should dread a too numerous
progeny from so many forms of the marriage-union as you
enumerate, were it not an established truth that virtues are
nourished most and flourish most in straitened and hard
circumstances; albeit I may say that one of the virtues of
your list has not very handsomely requited me the hospitable
reception she had. For what you call _policy_, but I would
rather have you call _loyalty to one's country_,—this
particular lass, after inveigling me with her fair name, has
almost expatriated me, so to speak. The chorus of the rest,
however, makes a very fine harmony. One's country is wherever
it is well with one.—And now I will conclude, after first
begging you, if you find anything incorrectly written or
without punctuation here, to impute that to the boy who has
taken it down from my dictation, and who is utterly ignorant
of Latin, so that I was forced, while dictating, not without
misery, to spell out the letters of the words one by one.
Meanwhile, I am glad that the merits of one whom I knew as a
young man of excellent hope have raised him to so honourable a
place in his Prince's favour; and I desire and hope all
prosperity for you otherwise. Farewell!
LONDON, August 15, 1666.
PASSAGES IN MILTON'S PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS IN WHICH HIS IDEA OF TRUE
LIBERTY, INDIVIDUAL, DOMESTIC, CIVIL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS, IS
EXPLICITLY SET FORTH
From an early period of his life Milton, as has been seen, looked
forward to the production of a great poem which would embody his highest
ideals of the true life of man and which 'after times would not
willingly let die'; and all his studies and all his earliest efforts in
poetry were, advisedly, preparations for this prospective creation. He
estimated learning wholly as a means of building himself up for the work
to which he felt himself dedicated. He cared not for learned lumber
which he could not bring into relation with his intellectual or
spiritual vitality, or make use of in his creative work. 'Learning for
its own sake' was no part of his creed as a scholar. He may be said to
speak for himself in the words which he gives to the Saviour in the
'Paradise Regained' (Book iv. 322 _et seq._):
'who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
—And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?—
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.'
And so, too, in the words which he gives to the angel Raphael, in the
'Paradise Lost' (Book vii. 126 _et seq._):
'But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.'
Wordsworth had as firm an assurance as Milton had, that he was a
dedicated spirit; but he did not attach the importance which Milton did
to great acquisitions of knowledge as a means to the fulfilment of his
mission. But Wordsworth's sense of his mission as a poet called for an
expression of his soul-experiences in _occasional_ poems. The
composition of a great epic would have shut him off from expressing, day
by day, the relations of Nature to the soul, as those relations were
revealed to him—relations with which wide learning had comparatively
little to do.
Milton was constitutionally, as well as by his education and
associations, a Puritan. And the state of the times in which he lived
coöperated with his mental and moral constitution, and with his
education, to make _the conflict of Good and Evil, the great fact, for
him, of the world, and, indeed, of the Universe_. To picture in the most
impressive way possible this great fact, and the sure triumph of Good
over Evil, however long that triumph may be retarded, he early felt to
be his mission as a poet. And he looked upon the acquisition of great
stores of learning as part of the indispensable equipment for one, who,
in this conflict, would range himself on the side of Good. All history
and all literatures, all sciences, religions, mythologies, were to be
explored, and made subservient, as far as might be, by him who would
fight the good fight. The accumulated knowledge and wisdom of mankind
was for him a part of that panoply of God which St. Paul, in his
Epistle to the Ephesians (vi. 11), commands to put on, in order to 'be
able to stand against the wiles of the devil.'
But learning was but a part, and however indispensable, an inferior
part, of this panoply. The soul's essential self, as the medium of the
divine, must give the prime efficacy to whatever is done in the mighty
conflict of good with evil. In the words of Browning's 'Sordello,' 'a
poet must be earth's essential king,' and he is that by virtue of his
exerting, or shedding the influence of, his essential personality in his
poetical creations. In his 'Apology for Smectymnuus,' he says, 'And long
it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who
would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable
things, _ought himself to be a true poem_; that is, a composition and
pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high
praises of heroic men, or famous cities, _unless he have in himself the
experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy_.'
And in his 'Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty,' he
speaks of the great work which looms hazily up in the future, as one
'not to be obtained by the invocation of dame memory and her siren
daughters, but _by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich
with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim, with the
hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he
pleases_: to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady
observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs;'
etc. In his invocation of the Holy Spirit, in the opening of the
'Paradise Lost,' he says:
'And chiefly thou, O Spirit that dost prefer
Before all temples _the upright heart and pure_,
Instruct me.'
And in the 'Paradise Regained' (Book i. 8-15):
'Thou Spirit, who ledst this glorious Eremite
Into the desert, his victorious field,
Against the spiritual foe, and broughtst him thence
By proof the undoubted Son of God, _inspire,
As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute_,
And bear through highth or depth of Nature's bounds,
With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds
Above heroic.'
Milton did not entertain the restricted view of inspiration which is
still entertained by large numbers of good people, namely, that only the
writers of the Old and New Testaments were inspired. With him, every
soul, raised, by ardent faith and sanctified desire, to a high plane of
spirituality, and thus brought into relationship with the highest
spiritual forces, was, in a measure, inspired.
What follows the quotation just made, from St. Paul's Epistle to the
Ephesians (vi. 12-18), is the best expression which may be given of
Milton's actuating creed:
'We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the
whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day,
and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt
about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and
your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all,
taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the
fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all
prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all
perseverance and supplication for all saints.'
It would seem that this grand passage from the Apostle must occur to
every reader of Milton as the best expression of the law according to
which he lived and wrote.
The intellectual and spiritual preparation which Milton felt necessary,
and was making, with an undivided devotion, for the production of a
great poem, determined his idea of liberty when, bidding farewell, for a
time (he could not have thought that it would be for so long a time), to
the loved haunts of the Muses, he engaged as a polemic prose writer, in
the struggle for domestic, civil, political, and religious liberty. This
idea, which may be said to be the informing principle of his prose
works, is that _inward liberty is the condition of true outward
liberty_. The latter cannot exist without the former. What is often
miscalled liberty is license; which only leads to a more degraded inward
servitude. For, in the absence of wholesome restraint, and of discipline
either self-imposed, or imposed by those in authority, men in their
weakness become more and more subjected to their lower nature. This idea
is beautifully presented in the following passage:
_From 'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty.' Chap. I._
'There is not that thing in the world of more grave and urgent
importance throughout the whole life of man, than is
DISCIPLINE. What need I instance? He that hath read with
judgment of nations and commonwealths, of cities and camps, of
peace and war, sea and land, will readily agree that the
flourishing and decaying of all civil societies, all the
moments and turnings of human occasions, are moved to and fro
as upon the axle of discipline. So that whatsoever power or
sway in mortal things weaker men have attributed to Fortune,
I durst with more confidence (the honour of Divine Providence
ever saved) ascribe either to the vigour or the slackness of
discipline. Nor is there any sociable perfection in this life,
civil or sacred, that can be above discipline; but she is that
which with her musical chords preserves and holds all the
parts thereof together. Hence in those perfect armies of Cyrus
in Xenophon, and Scipio in the Roman stories, the excellence
of military skill was esteemed, not by the not needing, but by
the readiest submitting to the edicts of their commander. And
certainly discipline is not only the removal of disorder; but
if any visible shape can be given to divine things, the very
visible shape and image of Virtue, whereby she is not only
seen in the regular gestures and motions of her heavenly
paces, as she walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice
audible to mortal ears. Yea, the angels themselves, in whom no
disorder is feared, as the apostle that saw them in his
rapture describes, are distinguished and quaternioned into
their celestial princedoms and satrapies, according as God
himself has writ his imperial decrees through the great
provinces of heaven. The state also of the blessed in
paradise, though never so perfect, is not therefore left
without discipline, whose golden surveying reed marks out and
measures every quarter and circuit of New Jerusalem. Yet is it
not to be conceived, that those eternal effluences of sanctity
and love in the glorified saints should by this means be
confined and cloyed with repetition of that which is
prescribed, but that our happiness may orb itself into a
thousand vagancies of glory and delight, and with a kind of
eccentrical equation be, as it were, an invariable planet of
joy and felicity; how much less can we believe that God would
leave his frail and feeble, though not less beloved church
here below, to the perpetual stumble of conjecture and
disturbance in this our dark voyage, without the card and
compass of discipline? Which is so hard to be of man's making,
that we may see even in the guidance of a civil state to
worldly happiness, it is not for every learned, or every wise
man, though many of them consult in common, to invent or frame
a discipline: but if it be at all the work of man, it must be
of such a one as is a true knower of himself, and in whom
contemplation and practice, wit, prudence, fortitude, and
eloquence must be rarely met, both to comprehend the hidden
causes of things, and span in his thoughts all the various
effects that passion or complexion can work in man's nature;
and hereto must his hand be at defiance with gain, and his
heart in all virtues heroic; so far is it from the ken of
these wretched projectors of ours, that bescrawl their
pamphlets every day with new forms of government for our
church. And therefore all the ancient lawgivers were either
truly inspired, as Moses, or were such men as with authority
enough might give it out to be so, as Minos, Lycurgus, Numa,
because they wisely forethought that men would never quietly
submit to such a discipline as had not more of God's hand in
it than man's. To come within the narrowness of household
government, observation will show us many deep counsellors of
state and judges to demean themselves incorruptly in the
settled course of affairs, and many worthy preachers, upright
in their lives, powerful in their audience: but look upon
either of these men when they are left to their own
disciplining at home, and you shall soon perceive, for all
their single knowledge and uprightness, how deficient they are
in the regulating of their own family; not only in what may
concern the virtuous and decent composure of their minds in
their several places, but, that which is of a lower and easier
performance, the right possessing of the outward vessel, their
body, in health or sickness, rest or labour, diet or
abstinence, whereby to render it more pliant to the soul, and
useful to the commonwealth; which if men were but as good to
discipline themselves, as some are to tutor their horses and
hawks, it could not be so gross in most households. If then it
appear so hard, and so little known how to govern a house
well, which is thought of so easy discharge, and for every
man's undertaking, what skill of man, what wisdom, what parts
can be sufficient to give laws and ordinances to the elect
household of God? If we could imagine that he had left it at
random without his provident and gracious ordering, who is he
so arrogant, so presumptuous, that durst dispose and guide the
living ark of the Holy Ghost, though he should find it
wandering in the field of Bethshemesh, without the conscious
warrant of some high calling? But no profane insolence can
parallel that which our prelates dare avouch, to drive
outrageously, and shatter the holy ark of the church, not
borne upon their shoulders with pains and labour in the word,
but drawn with rude oxen, their officials, and their own brute
inventions. Let them make shows of reforming while they will,
so long as the church is mounted upon the prelatical cart, and
not, as it ought, between the hands of the ministers, it will
but shake and totter; and he that sets to his hand, though
with a good intent to hinder the shogging of it, in this
unlawful waggonry wherein it rides, let him beware it be not
fatal to him, as it was to Uzza.'