It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our
time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention
of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of
the English language. They abound with passages compared with which
the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are
a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous
embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the
great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial
works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts
of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic
language, "a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."
We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyse
the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the
sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the
Iconoclast, and to point out some of those magnificent passages which
occur in the Treatise of Reformation and the Animadversions on the
Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks have already extended
renders this impossible.
We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the
subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic
of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his
memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we
be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the
offering which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we
seem to be contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred
and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in
his small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath
the faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his
eyes, rolling in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines
of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory
and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in
which we should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration
with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the
earnestness with which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed
such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age
unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we
should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood,
the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal
accents which flowed from his lips.
These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of
them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any
degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of
idolising either the living or the dead. And we think that there is
no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than
that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to
christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood
the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried
in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the
balance and have not been found wanting, which have been declared
sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly
stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These
great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton.
The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us.
His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the
Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to
the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions of other
soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous
efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to
delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can
study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot,
without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which
his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he
laboured for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured
every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on
temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and
tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and
with his fame.
THE END.