We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on which
the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his conduct during the
administration of the Protector. That an enthusiastic votary of liberty
should accept office under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first
sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the country
was then placed were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no
vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first
fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted
it, till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it
was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many
deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to
themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon
England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed
by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power.
He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had
at that time been known in the world. He reformed the representative
system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon.
For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but
with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an
American president. He gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment
of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even
reserving to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require
that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far,
we think, if the circumstances of the time and the opportunities which
he had of aggrandising himself be fairly considered, he will not lose
by comparison with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met
with corresponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he
would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But
when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which
they met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted
power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it
must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy.
Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first
honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course
which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force
of circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all
parties, the ability and energy of his splendid administration,
we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his
hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than
the best despot. But we suspect, that at the time of which we speak
the violence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable
and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between
Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That
Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of
the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it,
the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was
evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an
admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom
of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national
honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled
at home. And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of
open rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous
usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in
the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice,
were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from the
theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it
is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that
his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not
been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his
great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded from
a second protector, unless he was also a second Oliver Cromwell. The
events which followed his decease are the most complete vindication
of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. His death
dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the
Parliament, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect
raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in
their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their
own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting
one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future,
they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and
heartless of tyrants.
Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days
of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish
talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow
minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king
cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a
viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading
insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the
jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The government
had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to
persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning
courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every
high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch;
and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of
her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace
to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time
driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword
and a shaking of the head to the nations.
Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character
of Milton apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed
to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his
contemporaries. And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short
survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time
divided. We must premise, that our observations are intended to apply
only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to
the other side. In days of public commotion, every faction, like an
Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless
and heartless rabble, who prowl around its line of march in the hope
of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day
of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England,
at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish
politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it
rose, who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his face
in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in
Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who
dined on calves' heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as circumstances
altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out
of the account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really
deserved to be called partisans.
We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men,
perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous
parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read
them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers
to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were
the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to
the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time
when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men
of letters; they were as a body, unpopular; they could not defend
themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection.
They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies
of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their
dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture,
their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which
they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning,
their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the
laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy
of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should
carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has
already misled so many excellent writers.
"Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
Che mortali perigli in se contiene:
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."
Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures
through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most
unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen,
who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short
intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England
terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar
fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like
the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that
these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose
courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not
the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles
the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles
the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall,
like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain
only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden
chest which conceals the treasure.
The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character
from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests.
Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling
Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the
Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection
nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was
with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the
ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship
of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity
through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable
brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated
their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the
greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared
with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on
whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognised no title
to superiority but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they
despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If
they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they
were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found
in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life.
If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials,
legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were
houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should
never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests
they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a
more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles
by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of
a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a
mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action
the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who
had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy
a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have
passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly
causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had
risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had
proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the
prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of
no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by
the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been
darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that
all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.
Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm,
inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his
Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional
retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was
half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres
of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of
the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting
fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the
millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his
soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in
the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings
of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw
nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing
from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at
them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the
hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to
civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability
of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their
religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it.
The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on
every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity
and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure
its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and
their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had
made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion
and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of
corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but
never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir
Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down
oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part or lot
in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain,
not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.
Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive
the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their
domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often
injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we
know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell
into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant
austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their
Dunstans and their De Monforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet,
when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate
to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.
The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it
was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no means
numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which acted with
them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell
was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology
of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to
religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by
the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their
idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their
examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines
of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of
distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and
manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it
is probable, imperceptibly adopted.
We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them,
as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We
shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of
the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and
plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of
Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses which, under
the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never
tolerated. We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we
do that the cause of the king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we
yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of
the honest old cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them
with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled
to employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the
Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist countrymen
were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and
simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction,
dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour,
defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom
in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual independence was
strong within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish
motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood,
and the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as
that of Duessa; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they
were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they defended a false
and loathsome sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all into the
merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or
an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner which
had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers, and
for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides.
Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions,
they possessed, in far greater degree than their adversaries, those
qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices
of the Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy,
generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. They had far
more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their
manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes
more elegant, and their households more cheerful.
Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have
described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not
a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party
were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the
Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the
gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas
revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to
itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and
pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like
the Puritans, he lived
"As ever in his great taskmaster's eye."
Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty Judge and
an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external
circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible
resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer
was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions,
their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science,
and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred,
he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which
were almost entirely monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There
was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer
relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of
honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes
and his associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and
aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which
the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the
master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the
pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the
song of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their
fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure
antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The allusions
which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers.
The statesman was proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and the
romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the
sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite
lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the Penseroso,
which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning.
This is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, raises his
character in our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes
and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty
to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart
relents; but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in
honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her.
That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and
peculiar splendour still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself
to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted
himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which
he fought for the species of freedom which is the most valuable, and
which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is
all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries
raised their voices against Ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there
were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and
intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the
liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment.
These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most
important. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves
as well as tax themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion
of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew that those who,
with the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and
contented themselves with pulling down the king and imprisoning the
malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in
their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the
means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when
they should have thought of disenchanting.
"Oh, he mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed,
And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the lady that sits here
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless."
To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties
which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, was the
noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed.
For this he joined the Presbyterians; for this he forsook them. He
fought their perilous battle; but he turned away with disdain from
their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had
vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore
joined the Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular
chain, and to save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian
wolf. With a view to the same great object, he attacked the licensing
system in that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as
a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks
were, in general, directed less against particular abuses than against
those deeply seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, the
servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation.
That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more
effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary
services. He never came up in the rear when the outworks had been
carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At
the beginning of the changes, he wrote within comparable energy and
eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to
prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the
crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is
no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth
into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever
shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate
the noisome vapours, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who
most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with
which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the credit
of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and
political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body
of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He
stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems
of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the
god of light and fertility.
"Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera, vincit
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi."