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This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: MiltonAuthor: Sir Walter Alexander RaleighRelease date: June 4, 2007 [eBook #21677]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Title: Milton
Author: Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
Author: Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
Release date: June 4, 2007 [eBook #21677]
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON ***
E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer, Stephen Hutcheson,and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team(http://www.pgdp.net)
BYSIR WALTER RALEIGHAuthor of'Style,' 'Wordsworth,' &c.
TENTH IMPRESSION
LONDONEDWARD ARNOLD41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.1915
TOR. A. M. STEVENSONWHOSE RADIANT AND SOARING INTELLIGENCEENLIGHTENED AND GUIDED MEDURING THE YEARS OF OUR LOST COMPANIONSHIPTHIS UNAVAILING TRIBUTE OFMEMORY AND LOVE
Francis Bacon, in one of his prose fragments, draws a memorable distinction between "arts mechanical" and "sciences of conceit." "In arts mechanical," he says, "the first device comes shortest, and time addeth and perfecteth. But in sciences of conceit the first author goeth farthest, and time leeseth and corrupteth.... In the former, many wits and industries contributed in one. In the latter, many men's wits spent to deprave the wit of one."
I fear that literary criticism of the kind that I propose to myself in these chapters on Milton must be classified with the "sciences of conceit." Indeed, Bacon puts it out of question that he himself would so have regarded it, for he goes on to explain how, after the deliverances of a master, "then begin men to aspire to the second prizes, to be a profound interpreter and commentor, to be a sharp champion and defender, to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is theunfortunate succession of wits which the world hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of all knowledge goeth not on husbanded and improved, but wasted and decayed."
The blow is aimed at the scholastic philosophers, but it falls heavy on the critics of literature, on all who "aspire to the second prizes," or who think "that a borrowed light can increase the original light from whom it is taken." It is a searching arraignment of all who set themselves to expound in words the meaning and purpose of a master of verbal expression. Yet the very breadth of the indictment brings comfort and a means of escape. For the chief difficulties of an attempt to understand and judge Milton are difficulties inherent in the nature, not only of all criticism in the large sense, but also of all reading. In this association with great spirits which we call reading we receive but what we give, and take away only what we are fit to carry. Milton himself has stated the doctrine in its most absolute form, and has sought an enhanced authority for it by attributing it to the Christ--
Who readsIncessantly, and to his reading brings notA spirit and judgment equal or superior(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)Uncertain and unsettled still remains,Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,Crude or intoxicate, collecting toysAnd trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Literally taken, this is the negation of all the higher functions of criticism, and the paralysis of all learning. Only his peers, it is argued, can read Shakespeare intelligently; and, as if that did not give him few enough readers, they are further told that they will be wasting their time! But love, unlike this proud Stoicism, is humble, and contented with a little. I would put my apology in the language of love rather than of philosophy. I know that in Shakespeare, or in Milton, or in any rare nature, as in Faire Virtue, the mistress of Philarete--
There is some concealèd thingSo each gazer limiting,He can see no more of meritThan beseems his worth and spirit.
There is some concealèd thing
So each gazer limiting,
He can see no more of merit
Than beseems his worth and spirit.
The appreciation of a great author asks knowledge and industry before it may be attempted, but in the end it is the critic, not the author, who is judged by it, and, where his sympathies have been too narrow, or his sight too dim, condemned without reprieve, and buried without a tombstone.
Imperfect sympathy, that eternal vice of criticism, is sometimes irremediable, sometimes caused by imperfect knowledge. It takes forms as various as the authors whom it misjudges. In the case of Shakespeare, when we attempt to estimate him, togauge him, to see him from all sides, we become almost painfully conscious of his immensity. We can build no watch-tower high enough to give us a bird's-eye view of that "globe of miraculous continents." We are out of breath when we attempt to accompany him on his excursions, where he,
through strait, rough, dense, or rare,With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
He moves so easily and so familiarly among human passions and human emotions, is so completely at home in all societies and all companies, that he makes us feel hide-bound, prejudiced and ill-bred, by the side of him. We have to widen our conception of human nature in order to think of him as a man. How hard a thing it is to conceive of Shakespeare as of a human spirit, embodied and conditioned, whose affections, though higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stooped, stooped with the like wing, is witnessed by all biographies of Shakespeare, and by many thousands of the volumes of criticism and commentary that have been written on his works. One writer is content to botanise with him--to study plant-lore, that is, with a theatrical manager, in his hard-earned leisure, for teacher. Another must needs read the Bible with him, although, when all is said, Shakespeare's study was but little on the Bible. Others elect tokeep him to music, astronomy, law, hunting, hawking, fishing. He is a good companion out of doors, and some would fain keep him there, to make a country gentleman of him. His incorrigible preoccupation with humanity, the ruling passion and employment of his life, is beyond the range of their complete sympathy; they like to catch him out of hours, to draw him aside and bespeak his interest, for a few careless minutes, in the trades and pastimes that bulk so largely and so seriously in their own perspective of life. They hardly know what to make of his "unvalued book"; but they know that he was a great man, and to have bought a wool-fell or a quarter of mutton from him, that would have been something! Only the poet-critics attempt to see life, however brokenly, through Shakespeare's eyes, to let their enjoyment keep attendance upon his. And from their grasp, too, he escapes by sheer excess.
In the case of Milton the imperfection of our sympathy is due to other causes. In the first place, we know him as we do not know Shakespeare. The history of his life can be, and has been, minutely written. The affairs of his time, political and religious, have been recorded with enormous wealth of detail; and this wealth, falling into fit hands, has given us those learned modern historians to whom the seventeenth century means a period of five thousand two hundred andeighteen weeks. Milton's own attitude towards these affairs is in no way obscure; he has explained it with great fulness and candour in numerous publications, so that it would be easy to draw up a declaration of his chief tenets in politics and religion. The slanders of his adversaries he met again and again with lofty passages of self-revelation. "With me it fares now," he remarks in one of these, "as with him whose outward garment hath been injured and ill-bedighted; for having no other shift, what help but to turn the inside outwards, especially if the lining be of the same, or, as it is sometimes, much better." In his poetry, too, he delights to reveal himself, to take the knowing reader into his confidence, to honour the fit audience with a confession.
But the difficulty is there none the less. Few critics have found Milton too wide or too large for them; many have found him too narrow, which is another form of imperfect sympathy. His lack of humour has alienated the interest of thousands. His ardent advocacy of toleration in the noblest of his prose treatises has been belittled by a generation which prides itself on that flaccid form of benevolence, and finds the mere repeal of the Licensing Act the smallest part of it. His pamphlets on divorce and on government have earned him the reputation of a theorist anddreamer. The shrewd practical man finds it easy to despise him. The genial tolerant man, whose geniality of demeanour towards others is a kind of quit-rent paid for his own moral laxity, regards him as a Pharisee. The ready humourist devises a pleasant and cheap entertainment by dressing Adam and Eve in modern garments and discussing their relations in the jargon of modish frivolity. Even the personal history of the poet has been made to contribute to the gaiety of nations, and the flight of Mary Powell, the first Mrs. Milton, from the house in Aldersgate Street, has become something of a stock comic episode in the history of English literature. So heavy is the tax paid, even by a poet, for deficiency in breadth and humour. Almost all men are less humorous than Shakespeare; but most men are more humorous than Milton, and these, it is to be feared, having suffered themselves to be dragooned by the critics into professing a distant admiration forParadise Lost, have paid their last and utmost tribute to the genius of its author.
It may be admitted without hesitation that his lonely greatness rather forces admiration on us than attracts us. That unrelenting intensity; that lucidity, as clear as air and as hard as agate; that passion which burns with a consuming heat or with a blinding light in all his writings, have endeared him to none. It is impossible to takeone's ease with Milton, to induce him to forget his principles for a moment in the name of social pleasure. The most genial of his personal sonnets is addressed to Henry Lawrence, the son of the President of Cromwell's Council, and is an invitation to dinner. The repast promised is "light and choice"; the guest is apostrophised, somewhat formidably, as "Lawrence, of virtuous father, virtuous son," and is reminded, before he has dined, that
He who of these delights can judge, and spareTo interpose them oft, is not unwise.
He who of these delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
But the qualities that make Milton a poor boon-companion are precisely those which combine to raise his style to an unexampled loftiness, a dignity that bears itself easily in society greater than human. To attain to this height it was needful that there should be no aimless expatiation of the intellect, no facile diffusion of the sympathies over the wide field of human activity and human character. All the strength of mind and heart and will that was in Milton went into the process of raising himself. He is like some giant palm-tree; the foliage that sprang from it as it grew has long since withered, the stem rises gaunt and bare; but high up above, outlined against the sky, is a crown of perennial verdure.
It is essential for the understanding of Miltonthat we should take account of the rare simplicity of his character. No subtleties; no tricks of the dramatic intellect, which dresses itself in a hundred masquerading costumes and peeps out of a thousand spy-holes; no development, one might almost say, only training, and that self-imposed. There is but one Milton, and he is throughout one and the same, in his life, in his prose, and in his verse; from those early days, when we find him, an uncouth swain,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay,
to the last days when, amid a swarm of disasters, he approved himself like Samson, and earned for himself the loftiest epitaph in the language, his own--
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wailOr knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
The world has not wholly misunderstood or failed to appreciate this extraordinary character, as one curious piece of evidence will serve to show. Milton is one of the most egotistic of poets. He makes no secret of the high value he sets upon his gifts--"gifts of God's imparting," as he calls them, "which I boast not, but thankfully acknowledge, and fear also lest at my certain account they be reckoned to me manyrather than few." Before he has so much as begun his great poem he covenants with his reader "that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; ... nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases; to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them." And when he came to redeem his pledge, in the very opening lines of his epic, trusting to the same inspiration, he challenges the supremacy of the ancients by his
adventrous songThat with no middle flight intends to soarAbove the Aonian mount, while it pursuesThings unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
adventrous song
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
"This man cuts us all out, and the Ancients too," Dryden is reported to have said. But thisman intended to do no less, and formally announced his intention. It is impossible to outface Milton, or to abash him with praise. His most enthusiastic eulogists are compelled merely to echo the remarks of his earliest and greatest critic, himself. Yet with all this, none of the later critics, not the most cavalier nor the dullest, has dared to call him vain. His estimate of himself, offered as simple fact, has been accepted in the same spirit, and one abyss of ineptitude still yawns for the heroic folly, or the clownish courage, of the New Criticism.
John Milton, the son of a middle-aged scrivener, was born on Friday, December the 9th, 1608, at his father's house in Bread Street, Cheapside; and died on Sunday, November the 8th, 1674, in a small house, with but one room on a floor, in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, London. Of his father the records that remain show him to have been a convinced member of the Puritan party in the Church, a man of liberal culture and intelligence, a lover of music (which taste Milton inherited), a wise and generous friend to the son who became a poet. We owe it to his wisdom rather than to his prosperity that Milton was allowed to live at home without any ostensible profession until he was thirty years of age and more.
For the first sixteen years of his life Milton was educated partly at home, by a Presbyterian tutor called Thomas Young, partly at St. Paul'sSchool, which he attended for some years as a day-scholar. From his twelfth year onward he was an omnivorous reader, and before he left school had written some boyish verses, void of merit. The next fourteen years of his life, after leaving school, were spent at Cambridge, in Buckinghamshire, and in foreign travel, so that he was thirty years old before he lived continuously in London again.
We know pretty well how he spent his time at Cambridge and at Horton, sedulously turning over the Greek and Latin classics, dreaming of immortality. We know less about his early years in London, where there were wider and better opportunities of gaining an insight into "all seemly and generous arts and affairs." London was a great centre of traffic, a motley crowd of adventurers and traders even in those days, and the boy Milton must often have wandered down to the river below London Bridge to see the ships come in. His poems are singularly full of figures drawn from ships and shipping, some of them bookish in their origin, others which may have been suggested by the sight of ships. Now it is Satan, who, after his fateful journey through chaos, nears the world,
And like a weather-beaten vessel holdsGladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn.
And like a weather-beaten vessel holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn.
Now it is Dalila, whom the Chorus behold approaching.
Like a stately shipOf Tarsus, bound for the islesOf Javan or Gadire,With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,Sails filled, and streamers waving,Courted by all the winds that hold them play.
Like a stately ship
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
Of Javan or Gadire,
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails filled, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play.
Or, again, it is Samson reproaching himself,
Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwrackedMy vessel trusted to me from above,Gloriously rigged.
Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked
My vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigged.
The bulk of Satan is compared to the great sea-beast Leviathan, beheld off the coast of Norway by
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff.
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff.
In his approach to the happy garden the Adversary is likened to
them who sailBeyond the Cape of Hope, and now are pastMozambic, off at sea north-east winds blowSabaean odours from the spicy shoreOf Araby the Blest, with such delayWell pleased they slack their course, and many a leagueCheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles;So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend.
them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest, with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles;
So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend.
And when he draws near to Eve in the rose-thicket,
sidelong he works his way,As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought,Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the windVeers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail.
sidelong he works his way,
As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought,
Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind
Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail.
There is nothing here that is not within the reach of any inland reader, but Milton's choice of nautical similitudes may serve to remind us how much of the interest of Old London centred round its port. Here were to be heard those tales of far-sought adventure and peril which gave even to the boisterous life of Elizabethan London an air of triviality and security. Hereby came in "the variety of fashions and foreign stuffs," which Fynes Moryson, writing in Milton's childhood, compares to the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea for number. All sorts of characters, nationalities, and costumes were daily to be seen in Paul's Walk, adjoining Milton's school. One sort interests us pre-eminently. "In the general pride of England," says Fynes Moryson, "there is no fit difference made of degrees; for very Bankrupts, Players, and Cutpurses go apparelled like gentlemen." Shakespeare was alive during the first seven years of Milton's life, and was no doubt sometimes a visitor to the Mermaid, a stone's throw from the scrivener's house. Perhaps his cloak brushed the child Milton in the street. Milton was born in the golden age of the drama, and a score of masterpieces were put upon the London stage while he was in his cradle. But the golden age passed rapidly; the quality of the drama degenerated and the opposition to it grew strong before he was of years to attend a play. Perhaps henever saw a play by the masters during his boyhood, and his visits
to the well-trod stage anon,If Jonson's learned sock be on,Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,Warble his native woodnotes wild,
to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native woodnotes wild,
were either excursions of the imagination or belong to his later occasional sojourns in London. In hisEikonoklasteshe quotes certain lines fromRichard III., and here and there in his prose, as well as in his verse, there are possibly some faint reminiscences of Shakespearian phrases. So, for instance, inThe Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, he seems to echo a famous speech of Macbeth, while he claims that his remedy of free divorce "hath the virtue to soften and dispel rooted and knotty sorrows, and without enchantment." But these are doubtless the memories of reading. In theApology for Smectymnuus, when he has to reply to the charge that he "haunted playhouses" during his college days, he retorts the charge, it is true, rather than denies it. Yet the retort bespeaks a certain severity and preciseness in judging of plays and their actors, which can hardly have found gratification in the licenses and exuberances of the contemporary drama. It was not difficult, he remarks, to see plays, "when in the Colleges so many of the young divines, and those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the stage,writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds." "If it be unlawful," he continues, "to sit and behold a mercenary comedian personating that which is least unseemly for a hireling to do, how much more blameful is it to endure the sight of as vile things acted by persons either entered, or presently to enter into the ministry; and how much more foul and ignominious for them to be the actors!"
It was, at least, a happy chance that the first of Milton's verses to appear in print should have beenAn Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare, contributed to the Second Folio in 1632. The main interests of the household at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street must have been far enough remote from the doings of the companies of players. John Milton the elder would probably have agreed with Sir Thomas Bodley, who called plays "riffe-raffes," and declared that they should never come into his library. The Hampton Court Conference, the Synod of Dort, the ever-widening divisions in the Church, between Arminian and Calvinist, between Prelatist and Puritan, were probably subjects of a nearer interest, even to the poet in his youth, than the production of new or old plays upon the stage. Milton's childhood was spent in the very twilight of the Elizabethan age; it was greatly fortunatefor him, and for us, that he caught the after-glow of the sunset upon his face. He read Spenser while Spenser was still the dominant influence in English poetry. "He hath confessed to me," said Dryden, "that Spenser was his original,"--an incredible statement unless we understand "original" in the sense of his earliest admiration, his poetic godfather who first won him to poetry. He read Shakespeare and Jonson in the first editions. He read Sylvester's translation ofDu Bartas, His Divine Weekes and Workes; and perhaps thence conceived the first vague idea of a poem on a kindred subject. It is necessary to insist on his English masters, because, although the greater part of his time and study was devoted to the classics, the instrument that he was to use was learned in a native school. His metre, his magnificent vocabulary, his unerring phraseology, took learning and practice. He attached a high value to his study of English poetry. When he spoke of "our sage and serious Spenser (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas)," he was conscious that he was maintaining what seemed a bold paradox in an age when scholasticism still controlled education. It is pleasant to think of Milton during these early years, whether in London or at Christ's College, in his "calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts," before ever hehad a hint that he must perforce "embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." From the first, we may be sure, he read the poets as one poet reads another, and apprenticed himself to them for their craft. He was never drawn out of the highroad of art by the minuter and more entangling allurements of scholarship. In one of his Divorce pamphlets he tells, with the inevitable touch of pride, how he never could delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions, "whether it be natural disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator."
Milton was intended by his family, and by his own early resolves, for the service of the Church. The growing unrest, therefore, in matters ecclesiastical during the early part of the seventeenth century could not but affect him. The various parties and tendencies in the Church of England had never, since the Reformation, attained to a condition of stable equilibrium. But the settlement under Elizabeth was strengthened, and the parties bound together for thirty years, by the ever-present fear of Rome. When that fear was allayed, and the menace that hung over the very existence of the nation removed by the defeat of the Armada, the differences within the Church broke out afresh, andwaxed fiercer every year. Shakespeare grew to manhood during the halcyon years between the Marian persecutions and the Marprelate pamphlets--a kind of magic oasis, which gave us our English Renaissance. Milton's youth breathed a very different air. The Church, as it was, pleased hardly any party. Much of the old temple had been hastily pulled down; the new government offices that were to replace it had as yet been but partially built, and commanded no general approval. Considered as a social organisation, moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the country had fallen into a state not unlike decay. Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is no sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire during the years of his youth, from 1615 onwards:--"We lived in a country that had but little preaching at all: In the Village where I was born there was four Readers successively in Six years time, ignorant Men, and two of them immoral in their lives; who were all my School-masters. In the Village where my Father lived, there was a Reader of about Eighty years of Age that never preached, and had two Churches about Twenty miles distant: His Eyesight failing him, he said Common-Prayer without Book; but for the Reading of the Psalms and Chapters he got a Common Thresher and Day-Labourer one year, and a Taylor another year: (for the Clerk couldnot read well): And at last he had a Kinsman of his own (the excellentest Stage-player in all the Country, and a good Gamester and good Fellow) that got Orders and supplied one of his Places.... After him another Neighbour's Son took Orders, when he had been a while an Attorney's Clerk, and a common Drunkard, and tipled himself into so great Poverty that he had no other way to live.... These were the School-masters of my Youth ... who read Common Prayer on Sundays and Holy Days, and taught School and tipled on the Weekdays, and whipt the Boys when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft. Within a few miles about us were near a dozen more Ministers that were near Eighty years old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant Readers, and most of them of Scandalous Lives." Some few there were, Baxter admits, who preached in the neighbourhood, but any one who went to hear them "was made the Derision of the Vulgar Rabble under the odious Name of aPuritane."
In one of his Latin letters written from Cambridge, Milton himself speaks of the ignorance of those designed for the profession of divinity, how they knew little or nothing of literature and philosophy. The high prelacy and ritualism of Laud on the one hand, the Puritan movement on the other, each in some measure a protest against this state of things, were at fierce variance with eachother, and Milton's ear, from his youth upward, was "pealed with noises loud and ruinous." The age of Shakespeare was irrecoverably past, and it was impossible for any but a few imperturbable Cyrenaics, like Herrick, to "fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." The large indifference of Shakespeare to current politics was impossible for Milton. "I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician," said the folly of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the wisdom of Shakespeare. But now the Brownists and the politicians had it their own way; and Milton was something of both.
His notable early poems, written at College and during his retreat in Buckinghamshire, have therefore a singular interest and pathos. He was not long for the world in which these poems move with so ineffable a native grace. They are the poems of his youth, instinct with the sensibility of youth, and of a delicate and richly nurtured imagination. But they are also the poems of an age that was closing, and they have a touch of the sadness of evening. "I know not," says Dr. Johnson, speaking ofL'AllegroandIl Penseroso, "whether the characters are kept sufficiently apart. No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy, but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." It is true; for both characters are Milton himself, who embodies in separatepoems the cheerful and pensive elements of his own nature--and already his choice is made. There is something disinterested and detached about his sketches of the merriment which he takes part in only as a silent onlooker, compared with the profound sincerity of the lines--
And may at last my weary ageFind out the peaceful hermitage,The hairy gown and mossy cell,Where I may sit and rightly spellOf every star that heaven doth shew,And every herb that sips the dew,Till old experience do attainTo something like prophetic strain.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
The rising tide of political passion submerged the solemn Arcadia of his early fancies. Like Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and the shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous world." Hence there may be made a whole index of themes, touched on by Milton in his early poems, as if in promise, of which no fulfilment is to be found in the greater poems of his maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth is often treated, both by those who applaud and by those who lament it, as if it were the merest interlude between two poetic periods. It was not so; political passion dominates and informs all his later poems, dictating even their subjects. How was it possible for him to choose King Arthur and his Round Table for the subjectof his epic, as he had intended in his youthful days; when chivalry and the spirit of chivalry had fought its last fight on English soil, full in the sight of all men, round the forlorn banner of King Charles? The policy of Laud and Stratford kept Milton out of the Church, and sent him into retirement at Horton; the same policy, it may be plausibly conjectured, had something to do with the change in the subject of his long-meditated epic. From the very beginning of the civil troubles contemporary events leave their mark on all his writings. The topical bias (so to call it) is very noticeable in many of the subjects tentatively jotted down by him on the paper that is now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The corrupted clergy, who make so splendid and, as some think, so irrelevant an appearance inLycidas, figure frequently, either directly or by implication, in the long list of themes.
Without misgiving or regret, when the time came, Milton shut the gate on the sequestered paradise of his youth, and hastened downward to join the fighters in the plain. Before we follow him we may well "interpose a little ease" by looking at some of the beauties proper to the earlier poems, and listening to some of the simple pastoral melodies that were drowned when the organ began to blow.L'Allegrois full of them--
Sometimes, with secure delight,The upland hamlets will invite,When the merry bells ring round,And the jocund rebecks soundTo many a youth and many a maidDancing in the chequered shade,And young and old come forth to playOn a sunshine holiday.
Sometimes, with secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid
Dancing in the chequered shade,
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday.
That is Merry England of Shakespeare's time. But already the controversy concerning theBook of Sportshad begun to darken the air. Already the Maypole, that "great stinking idol," as an Elizabethan Puritan called it, had been doomed to destruction. Some years beforeL'Allegrowas written, a bard, who hailed from Leeds, had lamented its downfall in the country of his nativity--
Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes,(For then true love and amity was found)When every village did a May-pole raise,And Whitson Ales and May games did abound;And all the lusty Yonkers in a routWith merry Lasses danced the rod about;Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests,And poor men far'd the better for their feasts.
Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes,
(For then true love and amity was found)
When every village did a May-pole raise,
And Whitson Ales and May games did abound;
And all the lusty Yonkers in a rout
With merry Lasses danced the rod about;
Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests,
And poor men far'd the better for their feasts.
The next verse recalls that scene inThe Winter's Talewhere Shakespeare draws a vivid picture of Elizabethan country merrymaking--
The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and TowersRejoyc'd when they beheld the Farmers flourish,And would come down unto the Summer-BowersTo see the Country gallants dance the Morrice,And sometimes with his tenant's handsome daughterWould fall in liking, and espouse her afterUnto his Serving-man, and for her portionBestow on him some farme, without extortion.
The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and Towers
Rejoyc'd when they beheld the Farmers flourish,
And would come down unto the Summer-Bowers
To see the Country gallants dance the Morrice,
And sometimes with his tenant's handsome daughter
Would fall in liking, and espouse her after
Unto his Serving-man, and for her portion
Bestow on him some farme, without extortion.
Alas poore Maypoles, what should be the causeThat you were almost banish't from the earth?You never were rebellious to the lawes,Your greatest crime was harmelesse honest mirth;What fell malignant spirit was there foundTo cast your tallPiramidesto ground?* * * * *
Alas poore Maypoles, what should be the cause
That you were almost banish't from the earth?
You never were rebellious to the lawes,
Your greatest crime was harmelesse honest mirth;
What fell malignant spirit was there found
To cast your tallPiramidesto ground?
* * * * *
And you my native towne, which was of old,(When as thy Bon-fires burn'd and May-poles stood,And when thy Wassell-cups were uncontrol'd)The Summer Bower of Peace and neighbourhood,Although since these went down, thou ly'st forlorn,By factious schismes and humours over-borne,Some able hand I hope thy rod will raise,That thou maist see once more thy happy daies.
And you my native towne, which was of old,
(When as thy Bon-fires burn'd and May-poles stood,
And when thy Wassell-cups were uncontrol'd)
The Summer Bower of Peace and neighbourhood,
Although since these went down, thou ly'st forlorn,
By factious schismes and humours over-borne,
Some able hand I hope thy rod will raise,
That thou maist see once more thy happy daies.
The hopes of the bard of Leeds were fulfilled at the Restoration. Merriment, of a sort, came back to England; but it found no congenial acceptance from Milton. The Court roysterers, the Hectors, Nickers, Scourers, and Mohocks, among whom were numbered Sedley and Rochester, and others of the best poets of the day, are celebrated by him incidentally in those lines, unsurpassable for sombre magnificence, which he appends to his account of Belial--