The panegyric upon Cromwell has obtained from the public a very liberal dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have been unjustly lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and all are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse; or a trifling thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.
The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts are variegated with better passages and worse. There is something too farfetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on by saluting St. Lucar with cannon, “to lambs awakening the lion by bleating.” The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, who were burnt in their ship, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expressed their affection and their end by a conceit at once false and vulgar:
Alive, in equal flames of love they burn’d,And now together are to ashes turn’d.
Alive, in equal flames of love they burn’d,And now together are to ashes turn’d.
The verses to Charles, on his return, were doubtless intended to counterbalance the panegyric on Cromwell. If it has been thought inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its deficience has been already remarked.
The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the rest. The Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they were the work of Waller’s declining life, of those hours in which he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past with the sentiments which his great predecessor Petrarch bequeathed to posterity, upon his review of that love and poetry which have given him immortality.
That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced to confess superior, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves. By delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead; and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places at his fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a small portion. Intellectual decay is doubtless not uncommon; but it seems not to be universal. Newton was in his eighty-fifth year improving his chronology, a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my opinion, to have lost at eighty-two any part of his poetical power.
His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but before the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects, his success would hardly have been better.
It has been the frequent lamentation of good men that verse has been too little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have been made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have very seldom attained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not be improper to inquire why they have miscarried.
Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he, who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the Maker for his works, in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God.
Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are few, and being few are universally known; but, few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression.
Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those which repel, the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.
From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy: but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection cannot be improved.
The employments of pious meditation are Faith, Thanksgiving, Repentance, and Supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather then expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy.
Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere.
As much of Waller’s reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to which a versifier must attend.
He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who were living when his poetry commenced. The poets of Elizabeth had attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he might have studied with advantage the poem of Davies, which, though merely philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.
But he was rather smooth than strong; of “the full resounding line,” which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few examples. The critical decision has given the praise of strength to Denham, and of sweetness to Waller.
His excellence of versification has some abatements. He uses the expletive “do” very frequently; and, though he lived to see it almost universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it in his last compositions than in his first. Praise had given him confidence; and finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.
His rhymes are sometimes weak words: “so” is found to make the rhyme twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his book.
His double rhymes, in heroic verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips, who was his rival in the translation of Corneille’s “Pompey;” and more faults might be found were not the inquiry below attention.
He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as “waxeth,” “affecteth;” and sometimes retains the final syllable of the preterite, as “amazed,” “supposed,” of which I know not whether it is not to the detriment of our language that we have totally rejected them.
Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an Alexandrine he has given no example.
The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He is never pathetic, and very rarely sublime. He seems neither to have had a mind much elevated by nature nor amplified by learning. His thoughts are such as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance with life would easily supply. They had however then, perhaps, that grace of novelty which they are now often supposed to want by those who, having already found them in later books, do not know or inquire who produced them first. This treatment is unjust. Let not the original author lose by his imitators.
Praise, however, should be due before it is given. The author of Waller’s Life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythræus and some late critics call “Alliteration,” of using in the same verse many words beginning with the same letter. But this knack, whatever be its value, was so frequent among early writers, that Gascoigne, a writer of the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it; Shakespeare, in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is supposed to ridicule it; and in another play the sonnet of Holofernes fully displays it.
He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets; the deities, which they introduced so frequently, were considered as realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober reason might even then determine. But of these images time has tarnished the splendour. A fiction, not only detected but despised, can never afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it may furnish a transient allusion, or slight illustration. No modern monarch can be much exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had his “club” he has his “navy.”
But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and to him may be applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and justice, of himself and Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor Fido, he cried out, “If he had not read Aminta, he had not excelled it.”
As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification from Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of his work, which, after Mr. Hoole’s translation, will perhaps not be soon reprinted. By knowing the state in which Waller found our poetry, the reader may judge how much he improved it.
1.Erminia’s steed (this while) his mistresse boreThrough forrests thicke among the shadie treene,Her feeble hand the bridle raines forelore,Halfe in a swoune she was for fear I weene;But her flit courser spared nere the more,To beare her through the desart woods unseeneOf her strong foes, that chas’d her through the plaineAnd still pursu’d, but still pursu’d in vaine.2.Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:The Christian knights so full of shame and ireReturned backe, with faint and wearie pace!Yet still the fearfull Dame fled, swift as windeNor euer staid, nor euer lookt behinde.3.Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she driued,Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,Her plaints and teares with euery thought reuiued,She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.But when the sunne his burning chariot diuedIn Thetis wane, and wearie teame vntide,On Iordans sandie banks her course she staid,At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid4.Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,This was her diet that vnhappie night;But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)To ease the greefes of discontented wight,Spred forth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;And loue, his mother, and the graces keptStrong watch and warde, while this faire Ladie slept5.The birds awakte her with their morning song,Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,The murmuring brookes and whistling windes amongThe rattling boughes, and leaues, their parts did beare;Her eies vnclos’d beheld the groues alongOf swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare;And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,Prouokt again the virgin to lament.6.Her plaints were interrupted with a sound,That seem’d from thickest bushes to proceed,Some iolly shepherd sung a lustie round,And to his voice had tun’d his oaten reed;Thither she went, an old man there she found,(At whose right hand his little flock did feed)Sat making baskets, his three sonnes amongThat learn’d their father’s art, and learn’d his song.7.Beholding one in shining armes appeareThe seelie man and his were sore dismaid;But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,Her ventall vp, her visage open laidYou happie folke, of heau’n beloued deare,Work on (quoth she) upon your harmless traid,These dreadfull armes I beare no warfare bringTo your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes yon sing.8.But father, since this land, these townes and towres,Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,How may it be unhurt, that you and yoursIn safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of oursIs euer safe from storm of warlike broile;This wilderneese doth vs in safetie keepe,No thundering drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.9.Haply iust heau’ns defence and shield of right,Doth loue the innocence of simple swains,The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines;So kings have cause to feareBellonaesmight,Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,Nor ever greedie soldier was entisedBy pouertie, neglected and despised.10.O Pouertie, chefe of the heau’nly brood,Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!No wish for honour, thirst of others good,Can moue my hart, contented with mine owne:We quench our thirst with water of this flood,Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne;These little flocks of sheepe and tender goatesGiue milke for food, and wool to make us coates.11.We little wish, we need but little wealth,From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealthTheir fathers flocks, nor servants moe I need:Amid these groues I walks oft for my health,And to the fishes, birds, and beastes give heed,How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,And their contentment for ensample take.12.Time was (for each one hath his doting time,These siluer locks were golden tresses than)That countrie life I hated as a crime,And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,To Memphis’ stately pallace would I clime,And there became the mightie Caliphes manAnd though I but a simple gardner weare,Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.13.Entised on with hope of future gaine,I suffred long what did my soule displease;But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,I felt my native strength at last decrease;I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,And wisht I had enjoy’d the countries peace;I bod the court farewell, and with contentMy later age here have I quiet spent.14.While thus he spake, Erminia husht and stillHis wise discourses heard, with great attention,His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;After much thought reformed was her will,Within those woods to dwell was her intention,Till fortune should occasion new afford,To turne her home to her desired Lord.15.She said therefore, O shepherd fortunate!That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue.Yet liuest now in this contented state,Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,To entertaine me as a willing mateIn shepherds life, which I admire and loue;Within these plessant groues perchance my hart,Of her discomforts, may vnload some part.16.If gold or wealth of most esteemed deare,If iewels rich, thou diddest hold in prise,Such store thereof, such plentie haue I seen,As to a greedie minde might well suffice:With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,Two christall streames fell from her watrie eies;Part of her sad misfortunes then she told,And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.17.With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deareTowards his cottage gently home to guide;His aged wife there made her homely cheare,Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.The Princesse dond a poor pastoraes geare,A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)Were such, as ill beseem’d a shepherdesse.18.Not those rude garments could obscure, and hideThe heau’nly beautie of her angels face,Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,Or ought disparag’de, by those labours bace;Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,Both cheese and butter could she make, and frameHer selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.
1.
Erminia’s steed (this while) his mistresse boreThrough forrests thicke among the shadie treene,Her feeble hand the bridle raines forelore,Halfe in a swoune she was for fear I weene;But her flit courser spared nere the more,To beare her through the desart woods unseeneOf her strong foes, that chas’d her through the plaineAnd still pursu’d, but still pursu’d in vaine.
2.
Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:The Christian knights so full of shame and ireReturned backe, with faint and wearie pace!Yet still the fearfull Dame fled, swift as windeNor euer staid, nor euer lookt behinde.
3.
Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she driued,Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,Her plaints and teares with euery thought reuiued,She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.But when the sunne his burning chariot diuedIn Thetis wane, and wearie teame vntide,On Iordans sandie banks her course she staid,At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid
4.
Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,This was her diet that vnhappie night;But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)To ease the greefes of discontented wight,Spred forth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;And loue, his mother, and the graces keptStrong watch and warde, while this faire Ladie slept
5.
The birds awakte her with their morning song,Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,The murmuring brookes and whistling windes amongThe rattling boughes, and leaues, their parts did beare;Her eies vnclos’d beheld the groues alongOf swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare;And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,Prouokt again the virgin to lament.
6.
Her plaints were interrupted with a sound,That seem’d from thickest bushes to proceed,Some iolly shepherd sung a lustie round,And to his voice had tun’d his oaten reed;Thither she went, an old man there she found,(At whose right hand his little flock did feed)Sat making baskets, his three sonnes amongThat learn’d their father’s art, and learn’d his song.
7.
Beholding one in shining armes appeareThe seelie man and his were sore dismaid;But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,Her ventall vp, her visage open laidYou happie folke, of heau’n beloued deare,Work on (quoth she) upon your harmless traid,These dreadfull armes I beare no warfare bringTo your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes yon sing.
8.
But father, since this land, these townes and towres,Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,How may it be unhurt, that you and yoursIn safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of oursIs euer safe from storm of warlike broile;This wilderneese doth vs in safetie keepe,No thundering drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.
9.
Haply iust heau’ns defence and shield of right,Doth loue the innocence of simple swains,The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines;So kings have cause to feareBellonaesmight,Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,Nor ever greedie soldier was entisedBy pouertie, neglected and despised.
10.
O Pouertie, chefe of the heau’nly brood,Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!No wish for honour, thirst of others good,Can moue my hart, contented with mine owne:We quench our thirst with water of this flood,Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne;These little flocks of sheepe and tender goatesGiue milke for food, and wool to make us coates.
11.
We little wish, we need but little wealth,From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealthTheir fathers flocks, nor servants moe I need:Amid these groues I walks oft for my health,And to the fishes, birds, and beastes give heed,How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,And their contentment for ensample take.
12.
Time was (for each one hath his doting time,These siluer locks were golden tresses than)That countrie life I hated as a crime,And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,To Memphis’ stately pallace would I clime,And there became the mightie Caliphes manAnd though I but a simple gardner weare,Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.
13.
Entised on with hope of future gaine,I suffred long what did my soule displease;But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,I felt my native strength at last decrease;I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,And wisht I had enjoy’d the countries peace;I bod the court farewell, and with contentMy later age here have I quiet spent.
14.
While thus he spake, Erminia husht and stillHis wise discourses heard, with great attention,His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;After much thought reformed was her will,Within those woods to dwell was her intention,Till fortune should occasion new afford,To turne her home to her desired Lord.
15.
She said therefore, O shepherd fortunate!That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue.Yet liuest now in this contented state,Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,To entertaine me as a willing mateIn shepherds life, which I admire and loue;Within these plessant groues perchance my hart,Of her discomforts, may vnload some part.
16.
If gold or wealth of most esteemed deare,If iewels rich, thou diddest hold in prise,Such store thereof, such plentie haue I seen,As to a greedie minde might well suffice:With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,Two christall streames fell from her watrie eies;Part of her sad misfortunes then she told,And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.
17.
With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deareTowards his cottage gently home to guide;His aged wife there made her homely cheare,Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.The Princesse dond a poor pastoraes geare,A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)Were such, as ill beseem’d a shepherdesse.
18.
Not those rude garments could obscure, and hideThe heau’nly beautie of her angels face,Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,Or ought disparag’de, by those labours bace;Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,Both cheese and butter could she make, and frameHer selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.
Thelife of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton’s elegant abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition.
John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose.
His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous Papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion of his ancestors.
His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his skill in music, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and retired to an estate. He had probably more than common literature, as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law and adhered, as the law taught him, to the king’s party, for which he was a while persecuted; but having by his brother’s interest obtained permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by chamber-practice, that, soon after the accession of King James, he was knighted and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became necessary.
He had likewise a daughter Anne, whom he married with a considerable fortune to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the Crown-office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward, who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentic account of his domestic manners.
John the poet, was born in his father’s house, at the Spread Eagle, in Bread Street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he was instructed at first by private tuition under the care of Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh, and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.
He was then sent to St. Paul’s school, under the care of Mr. Gill; and removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ’s College, in Cambridge, where he entered a sizar, Feb. 12, 1624.
He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian has given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity.
But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first essays, who never rose to works like “Paradise Lost.”
At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the public eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would in any numerous school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.
Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year, by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance. If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the pride of Elizabeth’s reign, however they may have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced anything worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster’s “Roxana.”
Of these exercises, which the rules of the University required, some were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly applauded; for they were such as few can form: yet there is reason to suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he was treated was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either University that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction.
It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him, that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true; but it seems plain, from his own verses to “Diodati”, that he had incurred “rustication,” a temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term.
Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ,Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere CamumNec dudumvetitimelarisangit amor.—Nec duri libet usque minas preferre magistri,Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.Si sit hoc exilium patrias adiisse penates,Et vacuum curis otia greta sequi,Non ego velprofuginomen sortemve recuso,Lætus etexiliiconditione fruor.
Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ,Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere CamumNec dudumvetitimelarisangit amor.—Nec duri libet usque minas preferre magistri,Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.Si sit hoc exilium patrias adiisse penates,Et vacuum curis otia greta sequi,Non ego velprofuginomen sortemve recuso,Lætus etexiliiconditione fruor.
I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can give to the term, “vetiti laris,” “a habitation from which he is excluded;” or how “exile” can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet more, that he is weary of enduring “the threats of a rigorous master, and something else which a temper like his cannot undergo.” What was more than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his “exile,” proves likewise that it was not perpetual; for it concludes with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.
He took both the usual degrees: that of bachelor in 1628, and that of master in 1632; but he left the University with no kindness for its institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his governors, or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education, inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in literature, from their entrance upon grammar, till they proceed, as it is called Masters of Art. And in his discourse “on the likeliest Way to remove Hirelings out of the Church,” he ingeniously proposes that the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses should be applied to such academies all over the land where languages and arts may be taught together that youth may be at once brought up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves (without tithes) by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers.
One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted, is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act plays, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trincalos, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of courtiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles.
This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were therefore only criminal when they were acted by academics.
He went to the university with a design of entering into the church, but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a clergyman, must “subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”
These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the Articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical obedience. I know not any of the Articles which seem to thwart his opinions: but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil, raise his indignation.
His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastic luxury of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more fitness for his task; and that he goes on, “not taking thought of being late, so it gives advantage to be more fit.”
When he left the University, he returned to his father, then residing at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years, in which time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?
It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing else; but Milton found time to write the “Masque of Comus,” which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater’s sons and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer’s “Circe;” but we never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:
—a quo ceu fonte perenniVatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.
—a quo ceu fonte perenniVatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.
His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the death of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, Secretary for Ireland in the time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a favourite at Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory. Milton’s acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan poetry, and his malignity to the church by some lines which are interpreted as threatening its extermination.
He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for while he lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the Countess Dowager of Derby, where the Arcades made part of a dramatic entertainment.
He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother set him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father’s consent, and Sir Henry Wotton’s directions; with the celebrated precept of prudence,i pensieri stretti,ed il viso sciolto; “thoughts close, and looks loose.”
In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour of Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then residing at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden. From Paris he hasted into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence studied the language and literature; and, though he seems to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, stayed two months at Florence; where he found his way into the academies, and produced his compositions with such applause as appears to have exalted him in his own opinion, and confirmed him in the hope, that, “by labour and intense study, which,” says he, “I take to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong propensity of nature,” he might “leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.”
It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others, for scarcely any man ever wrote so much, and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.
At Florence he could not indeed complain that his merit wanted distinction. Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastic inscription, in the tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the first stanza is only empty noise; the rest are perhaps too diffuse on common topics: but the last is natural and beautiful.
From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius, the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three years at Oxford, introduced him to Cardinal Barberini: and he, at a musical entertainment, waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly. Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a tetrastich: neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers by this literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli, though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance indisputably in Milton’s favour.
Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected but to have known that they were saidnon tam de se,quam supra se.
At Rome, as at Florence, he stayed only two months: a time indeed sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.
From Rome he passed on to Naples, in company of a hermit, a companion from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his introduction to Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron of Tasso. Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour him with a sorry distich, in which he commends him for everything but his religion: and Milton, in return, addressed him in a Latin poem, which must have raised a high opinion of English elegance and literature.
His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but hearing of the differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper to hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements while his countrymen were contending for their rights. He therefore came back to Rome, though the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the Jesuits, for the liberty of his conversations on religion. He had sense enough to judge that there was no danger, and therefore kept on his way, and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning controversy. He had perhaps given some offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in the Inquisition for philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by Manse, that, by his declarations on religious questions, he had excluded himself from some distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him. But such conduct, though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe; and Milton stayed two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence without molestation.
From Florence he visited Lucca. He afterwards went to Venice; and, having sent away a collection of music and other books, travelled to Geneva, which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.
Here he reposed as in a congenial element, and became acquainted with John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity. From Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence of a year and three months.
At his return he heard of the death of his friend, Charles Diodati; a man whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was thought by Milton worthy of a poem, entitled “Epitaphium Damonis,” written with the common but childish imitation of pastoral life.
He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel a tailor in St. Bride’s Churchyard, and undertook the education of John and Edward Philips, his sister’s sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden in Aldersgate Street, which was not then so much out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. Here he received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.
Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the 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. This is the period of his life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.
It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate Street by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.
The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that treat of physical subjects, such as the Georgic, and astronomical treatises of the ancients. This was a scheme of improvement which seems to have busied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who had more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments of life, formed the same plan of education in his imaginary college.
But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, that one may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.
Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians.
Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of Nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was how to do good and avoid evil.
Οτι ποι ὲν μεγάροισι κακόντ’ άγαθόντε τέτυκται
Οτι ποι ὲν μεγάροισι κακόντ’ άγαθόντε τέτυκται
Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.
That in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology, of which he dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that were then fashionable in the Dutch universities.
He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now and then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with some gay gentlemen of Gray’s Inn.
He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent his breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641 he published a treatise of Reformation in two books, against the Established Church, being willing to help the Puritans, who were, he says, “inferior to the Prelates in learning.”
Hall, Bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in defence of Episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers, of whose names the first letters made the celebrated wordSmectymnuus, gave their answer. Of this answer a confutation was attempted by the learned Usher; and to the confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, “Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some late Treatises, one whereof goes under the Name of James, Lord Bishop of Armagh.”
I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of Usher, that he had now adopted the Puritanical savageness of manners. His next work was, “The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy,” by Mr. John Milton, 1642. In this book he discovers, not with ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of his own powers, and promises to undertake something, he yet knows not what, that may be of use and honour to his country. “This,” says he, “is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that 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, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs till which in some measure be compassed, I refuse not to sustain this expectation.” From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the “Paradise Lost.”
He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question. To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was “vomited out of the university,” he answers in general terms: “The fellows of the college wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many times how much better it would content them that I should stay.—As for the common approbation or dislike of that place, as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself the more for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to obtain with me. Of small practice were the physician who could not judge by what she and her sister have of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but before it will be well with her, she must vomit with strong physic. The university, in the time of her better health, and my younger judgment, I never greatly admired, but now much less.”
This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured. He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and the train of his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives an account of his own purity: “That if I be justly charged,” says he, “with this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold shame.”
The style of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his antagonist. This roughness he justifies by great examples, in a long digression. Sometimes he tries to be humorous: “Lest I should take him for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one who serves not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half-a-dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies.—And thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of himself.” Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, “that hell grows darker at his frown.”
His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his house, and his school increased. At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town with him, and expected all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady, however, seems not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Philips relates, “having for a month led a philosophic life, after having been used at home to a great house, and much company and joviality, her friends, possibly by her own desire, made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, upon a promise of her return at Michaelmas.”
Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies, and now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband’s habitation, and therefore very willingly forgot her promise. He sent her a letter, but had no answer; he sent more with the same success. It could be alleged that letters miscarry; he therefore despatched a messenger, being by this time too angry to go himself. His messenger was sent back with some contempt. The family of the lady were Cavaliers.
In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton’s, less provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton soon determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those who could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published (in 1644) “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,” which was followed by the “Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,” and the next year his “Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the four chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage.”
This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who, then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the author should be called before the Lords; “but that house,” says Wood, “whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his accusers, did soon dismiss him.”
There seems not to have been much written against him, nor anything by any writer of eminence. The antagonist that appeared is styled by him, “A Serving Man turned Solicitor.” Howel, in his Letters, mentions the new doctrine with contempt; and it was, I suppose, thought more worthy of derision than of confutation. He complains of this neglect in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible, and the second not excellent.
From this time it is observed that he became an enemy to the Presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party by his humour is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; he loves himself rather than truth.
His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments, the daughter of one Doctor Davis, who was, however, not ready to comply, they resolved to endeavour a reunion. He went sometimes to the house of one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and at one of his usual visits was surprised to see his wife come from another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees. He resisted her entreaties for a while; “but partly,” says Philips, “his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a fair league of peace.” It were injurious to omit that Milton afterwards received her father and her brothers in his own house, when they were distressed, with other Royalists.
He published about the same time his “Areopagitica, a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing.” The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his prospects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic poetry was never long out of his thoughts.
About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which the “Allegro,” and “Penseroso,” with some others, were first published.
He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away; “and the house again,” says Philips, “now looked like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school, to teach all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings nor his way of teaching savoured in the least of pedantry.”
Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not sell literature to all comers at an open shop; he was a chamber-milliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.
Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: “He is much mistaken,” he says, “if there was not about this time a design of making him an adjutant-general in Sir William Waller’s army. But the new-modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design.” An event cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only “designed, about some time,” if a man “be not much mistaken.” Milton shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken, somebody at some time designed him for a soldier.
About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645), he removed to a smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He is not known to have published anything afterwards till the king’s death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the Presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, “and to compose the minds of the people.”
He made some remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish rebels. While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did only what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions, first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced conviction, he yet shared—only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no less sincere than his opponents. But, as faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having interpolated the book called “Icon Basilike,” which the council of state, to whom he was now made Latin Secretary, employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer taken from Sidney’s “Arcadia,” and imputing it to the king, whom he charges, in his “Iconoclastes,” with the use of this prayer, as with a heavy come, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is venerable or great: “Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing deity—as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the grave bishop that attended him, as a special relic of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god?”
The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold the regicides took away; so that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it by adaptation was innocent, and they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of their malice could contrive what they wanted to accuse.
King Charles the Second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was reported, a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man of skill in languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism, almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he probably had not much considered the principles of society or the right of government, undertook the employment without distrust of his own qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1649 published “Defensio Regis.”
To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable to decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. In my opinion, Milton’s periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he delights himself with teasing his adversary as much as with confuting him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmasius, which, whoever entered, left half his virility behind him. Salmasius was a Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a scold.Tu es Gallus, says Milton,et,ut aiunt,nimium gallinaceus. But his supreme pleasure is to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, with vicious Latin. He opens his book with telling that he has usedPersona, which, according to Milton, signifies only aMask, in a sense not known to the Romans, by applying it as we applyPerson. But as Nemesis is always on the watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism by an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when for one of those supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and I think some one before him, has remarked, “propino te grammatistis tuis vapulandum.” Fromvapulo, which has a passive sense,vapulanduscan never be derived. No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.
Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of sight; but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was supplied by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book was much read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily gains attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his king, could hardly want an audience.
That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity, or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant of literature, that almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a new name, not yet considered as any one’s rival. If Christina, as is said, commended the defence of the people, her purpose must be to torment Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her civil station, nor her natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by birth a queen, and by temper despotic.
That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton’s book, treated with neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man, so long accustomed to admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which however he was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of attendants scarce less than regal.
He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published by his son in the year of the Restoration. In the beginning, being probably most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his use of the wordpersona; but, if I remember right, he misses a better authority than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his fourth satire:
—Quid agis cum dira et fœdior omniCriminepersonaest?
—Quid agis cum dira et fœdior omniCriminepersonaest?
As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel, Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened Salmasius’s life, and both perhaps with more malignity than reason. Salmasius died at the Spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and, as controvertists are commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered with the credit of destroying him.
Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title of Protector, but with kingly and more than kingly power. That his authority was lawful, never was pretended; he himself founded his right only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of public employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy, but, continuing to exercise his office under a manifest usurpation, betrayed to his power that liberty which he had defended. Nothing can be more just than that rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had justified the murder of his king, for some acts which seemed to him unlawful, should now sell his services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was evident that he could do nothing lawful.
He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect was such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin secretary, or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be diverted, and too strong to be subdued.
About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long continue the appearance of lamenting her; but after a short time married Catharine, the daughter of one Captain Woodcock, of Hackney, a woman doubtless educated in opinions like his own. She died, within a year, of childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband honoured her memory with a poor sonnet.
The first reply to Milton’s “Defensio Populi” was published in 1651, called “Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni) defensionem destructivam Regis et Populi.” Of this the author was not known; but Milton and his nephew Philips, under whose name he published an answer so much corrected by him, that it might be called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, knowing him no friend to regicides, thought themselves at liberty to treat him as if they had known what they only suspected.
Next year appeared “Regii Sanguinis clamor ad Cœlum.” Of this the author was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication, was treated as the writer by Milton, in his “Defensio Secunda,” and overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton’s pride operated against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing that Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of mistake.
In this second Defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness of his flattery,Deserimur,Cromuelle tu solus superes,ad te summa nostrarum rerum,rediit,in te solo consistit,insuperabili tuæ virtuti cedimus cuncti,nemine vel obloquente,nisi qui æquales inæqualis ipse honores sibi quærit,aut digniori concessos invidet,aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum,vel rationi consentaneum,esse in civitate nihil æquius,nihil utilius,quam potiri rerum dignissimum.Eum te agnoscunt omnes,Cromuelle,ea tu civis maximus,et gloriosissimus,dux publici consilii,exercituum fortissimorum imperator,pater patriæ gessisti.Sic tu spontanea bonorum omnium et animitus missa voce salutaris.
Cæsar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile or more elegant flattery. A translation may show its servility; but its elegance is less attainable. Having exposed the unskilfulness or selfishness of the former government, “We were left,” says Milton, “to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into our hands, and subsists only in your abilities. To your virtue, overpowering and resistless, every man gives way, except some who, without equal qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of merit greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that in the coalition of human society nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power. Such, sir, are you by general confession; such are the things achieved by you, the greatest and most glorious of our countrymen, the director of our public councils, the leader of unconquered armies, the father of your country; for by that title doss every good man hail you with sincere and voluntary praise.”
Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he declares in his title to be justly called the author of the “Regii Sanguinis Clamor.” In this there is no want of vehemence nor eloquence, nor does he forget his wonted wit.Morus es?an Momus?an uterque idem est? He then remembers that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree, and hints at the known transformation:
—Poma alba ferebatQuæ post nigra tulit Morus.
—Poma alba ferebatQuæ post nigra tulit Morus.
With this piece ended his controversies; and he from this time gave himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.
As secretary to the Protector he is supposed to have written the Declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was artfully suspended, the delay was publicly imputed to Mr. Milton’s indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind.
Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes, and to have resumed three great works which he had planned for his future employment—an epic poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of the Latin tongue.
To collect a dictionary seems a work of all others least practicable in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun it, after he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, he continued it, says Philips, “almost to his dying day; but the papers were so discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the press.” The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed at Cambridge, had the use of those collections in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards is not known.
To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more skilful and attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was probably the difficulty of consulting and comparing that stopped Milton’s narrative at the Conquest—a period at which affairs were not very intricate, nor authors very numerous.
For the subject of his epic poem, after much deliberation, long choosing, and beginning late, he fixed upon “Paradise Lost,” a design so comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. He had once designed to celebrate King Arthur, as he hints in his verses to Mansus; but “Arthur was reserved,” says Fenton, “to another destiny.”
It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript, and to be seen in a library at Cambridge, that he had digested his thoughts on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were anciently called Mysteries; and Philips had seen what he terms part of a tragedy, beginning with the first ten lines of Satan’s address to the Sun. These mysteries consist of allegorical persons, such as Justice, Mercy, Faith. Of the tragedy or mystery of “Paradise Lost” there are two plans
The Persons.
Michael.
Chorus of Angels.
Heavenly Love.
Lucifer.
Adam, Eve, with the Serpent
Conscience.
Death.
Labour, }
Sickness, }
Discontent, } Mutes.
Ignorance, }
with others; }
Faith.
Hope.
Charity.
The Persons.
Moses.
Divine Justice, Wisdom
Heavenly Love.
The Evening Star, Hesperus.
Chorus of Angels.
Lucifer.
Adam.
Eve.
Conscience.
Labour, }
Sickness, }
Discontent, } Mutes
Ignorance, }
Fear, }
Death, }
Faith.
Hope.
Charity.
The Persons.
Moses, προλογίζει, recounting how he assumed his true body; that it corrupts not, because it is with God in the mount; declares the like of Enoch and Elijah; besides the purity of the place, that certain pure winds, dews, and clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to the sight of God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence, by reason of their sin.
Justice, Mercy, Wisdom } debating what should become of man, if he fall.
Chorus of Angels singing a hymn of the Creation.
Heavenly Love.
Evening Star.
Chorus sing the marriage-song, and describe Paradise.
Lucifer contriving Adam’s ruin.
Chorus fears for Adam, and relates Lucifer’s rebellion and fall.
Adam, Eve } fallen.
Conscience cites them to God’s examination.
Chorus bewails, and tells the good Adam has lost.
Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.
— — presented by an angel with Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Famine, Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, Fear, Death } Mutes.
To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat, Tempest, etc.
Faith, Hope, Charity, comfort him and instruct him.
Chorus briefly concludes.