Title: Milton
Author: Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
Language: English
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                   *       *       *       *       *



                                MILTON


                       Thomas Babington Macaulay


                    NEW YORK, H. M. CALDWELL & Co.
                                 1900



                           TABLE OF CONTENTS


                                                          Pag.

        CHAPTER I                                          1

        CHAPTER II                                         9

        CHAPTER III                                       26

        CHAPTER IV                                        43

        CHAPTER V                                         76

        CHAPTER VI                                       113

        CHAPTER VII                                      149


                               MILTON[1]



                               CHAPTER I


Toward the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of the
state papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of
his office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found
corrected copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton, while he
filled the office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the
Popish Trials and the Rye-House Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an
envelope, superscribed _To Mr. Skinner, Merchant_. On examination, the
large manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on the Doctrines of
Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished
after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it
is well known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious
friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he
may have fallen under the suspicions of the government during that
persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford
parliament, and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his
papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it has
been found. But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have
been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the great poet.

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his Majesty to edit and translate the
treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honourable to
his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy
or elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity.
His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit
of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of
a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and
tolerant toward those of others.

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like
all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style
of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate
imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the
ceremonial cleanness which characterises the diction of our academical
Pharisees. The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his
composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not in
short sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of
his subject compelled him to use many words

 "That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his
mother tongue; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to
arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a
foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of
Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the clothes of the ancients.

Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and
independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and
devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes to form his system
from the Bible alone; and his digest of Scriptural texts is certainly
among the best that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his
inferences as in his citations.

Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to have excited
considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism, and his theory on
the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person
could have read the "Paradise Lost" without suspecting him of the
former; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with the history
of his life, ought to be much startled at the latter. The opinions
which he has expressed respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity
of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have
caused more just surprise.

But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were
it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would not much
edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not
to be converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this
essay will follow the _Defensio Populi_, to the dust and silence of the
upper shelf. The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances
attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of
attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in
every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will
then, to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn,
to make room for the forthcoming novelties.

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it
may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never
choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint till they have
awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some
relic of him, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of
his blood. On the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the
late interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and
good man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral
and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest
of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn
for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all
love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet,
the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the
champion and the martyr of English liberty.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Jonnis Miltoni Angli, de Doctrinâ Christiana libri duo posthumi._
A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures
alone. By John Milton, translated from the Original by Charles R.
Sumner, M. A., etc., 1825.



                              CHAPTER II


It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry
that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilised
world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the
art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced.
There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the
same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works they
acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest
productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to
rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation,
supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though
destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which
defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors
created; he lived in an enlightened age; he received a finished
education; and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of
his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages.

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may
appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable
circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether
he had not been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson has
thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet,
we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic.
He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the
civilisation which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had
acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder
age of simple words and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily
declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of
imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the
more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold
that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem
produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe
in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest
poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were
the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a
corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the
experimental science to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of
the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials,
ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has
been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject.
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by
antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions,
to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie
under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to
praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily
surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs.
Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague
or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by
resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more
than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation.

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still
less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies
these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the
instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the
musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of
the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations,
like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance
from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an
enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people
is poetical.

This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the
effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual
operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses.
Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but
particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.
In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at
individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories
and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and
personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to
analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the
business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may
believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human
actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about
the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence
his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may
have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of
the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his
Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human
actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one.
It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much
able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the
Bees. But could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how
to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to
combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real,
living, individual man?

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a
certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure
ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in
verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many
metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest
praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner
as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means
of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest
of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour
and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of
the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled.

              "As imagination bodies forth
      The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
      Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
      A local habitation and a name."

These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which he ascribes to the
poet,--a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is
essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings
are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions
have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first
suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a
partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence of all people
children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without
reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented
to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man,
whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear,
as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She
knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are
no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes; she
weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should
feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of
the imagination over uncultivated minds.

In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of
ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect
to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an
enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much
philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis,
abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good
ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will
not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them,
and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to
conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the
agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists,
according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into
convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he
shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and
Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost
miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilised community, and
most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They
linger longest among the peasantry.

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern
produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern
acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in
a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions,
as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the
shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments
of the phantoms which the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We
cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the
clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great
poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the
whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which
has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His
very talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be
proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable
among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be
proportioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is
well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not
resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time
great talents, intense labour, and long meditation, employed in this
struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say,
absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause.

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater
difficulties than Milton. He received a learned education; he was
a profound and elegant classical scholar; he had studied all the
mysteries of Rabbinical literature; he was intimately acquainted
with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or
information was then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet
of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his
Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order;
and his poems in the ancient language, though much praised by those who
have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his
admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination; nor indeed do we
think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority
of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad
writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the
Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin
styles as a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster.

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly,
sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful
and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes
are in general as ill-suited to the production of vigorous native
poetry as the flower-pots of a hothouse to the growth of oaks. That the
author of the Paradise Lost should have written the Epistle to Manso
was truly wonderful. Never before were such marked originality and such
exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of
Milton the artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably
preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a peculiar
charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from
all other writings of the same class. They remind us of the amusements
of those angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel:

      "About him exercised heroic games
      The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads
      Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear,
      Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold."



                              CHAPTER III


We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of
Milton ungirds itself without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and
terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his
imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was
the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the
weight of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its
own heart and radiance.

It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete examination
of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the
merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the
numbers, and the excellence of that style, which no rival has been able
to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest
perfection the idiomistic powers of the English tongue, and to which
every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of
grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which
we are entering innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet
the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling
gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf.

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme
remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader.
Its effect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what
it suggests; not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as
by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind
through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the
Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion,
but takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a
light, that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton
cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader
coöperate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished
picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves
others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his
hearer to make out the melody.

We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in
general means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is
most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies
less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem,
at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But
they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than
the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start
at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give
up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one
synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell
loses its power; and he who should then hope to conjure with it would
find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he
stood crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no
sound but "Open Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt
to translate into his own diction some part of the Paradise Lost, is a
remarkable instance of this.

In support of these observations, we may remark that scarcely any
passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more
frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster-rolls
of names. They are not always more appropriate or more melodious than
other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of them is the first
link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of
our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard
in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent
of their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period
of history. Another places us among the novel scenes and manners of a
distant region. A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of
childhood, the schoolroom, the dogeared Virgil, the holiday, and the
prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous
romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint
devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements
of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily
displayed than in Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible to
conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more
exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from others, as
attar of roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed
essence from the thin diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so much
poems, as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to
make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza.

The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of very
different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are
lyric poems in the form of plays. There are, perhaps, no two kinds of
composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The
business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let
nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his
personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant
as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or
the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of
Byron were his least successful performances. They resemble those
pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbury,
in which a single movable head goes round twenty different bodies, so
that the same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of
a hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the
characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and
sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this species of
egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It
is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to
his own emotion.

Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to
effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek
drama, on the model of which the Samson was written, sprang from the
Ode. The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of
its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists
coöperated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first
appearance. Æschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time,
the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days
of Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in
war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation,
led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of
Herodotus it should seem that they still looked up, with the disciples,
to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural
that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental
style. And that style, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindar
and Æschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The
book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable
resemblance to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works
are absurd; considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If,
for instance, we examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on
his return, or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the
principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn them as
monstrous. But if we forget the characters, and think only of the
poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy
and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was
consistent with its original form. His portraits of men have a sort
of similarity; but it is the similarity not of a painting, but of a
bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it does not produce an
illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it
was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead
of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He
substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes.

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more highly
than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed the caresses which
this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on "sad Electra's
poet" sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing
the long ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that
this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious
to the Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Æschylus for his model, he
would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out
profusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought
on those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it
impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their
own nature inconsistent, he has failed, as every one else must have
failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a
good play. We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good
ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed,
neutralise each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of
this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful
and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric
melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But
we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of
Milton.

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson
is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the
noblest performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as
far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the Faithful Shepherdess
is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for
Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and
loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the
same veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and
Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections.
The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to
which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style,
sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter
aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned
with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the
rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears
are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of
standing the severest test of the crucible.

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterwards
neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to be,
essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has not
attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature
of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded,
wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as
majestic soliloquies; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with
their eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of
the dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break
the illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are
lyric in form as well as in spirit. "I should much commend," says the
excellent Sir Henry Wotten in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part
if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in
your songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have
seen yet nothing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It
is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is
discharged from the labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he
is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he
rises even above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from
the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial
freedom and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly,

      "Now my task is smoothly done,
      I can fly or I can run,"

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian
dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia,
which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys
of the Hesperides.



                              CHAPTER IV


There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we would
willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter into
a detailed examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained,
which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an
instance of the blindness of the parental affection which men of
letters bear toward the offspring of their intellects. That Milton was
mistaken in preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise
Lost, we readily admit. But we are sure that the superiority of the
Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is not more decided than the
superiority of the Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made
its appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us from discussing the
point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production which
the general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class of
human compositions.

The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise
Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some points,
resembled that of Dante; but he has treated it in a widely different
manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting
our own great poet, than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan
literature.

The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics
of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which
Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they
are. Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible
only to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly
represent than on what they remotely suggest. However strange, however
grotesque, may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe,
he never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the colour,
the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the
size. His similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of
other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain,
businesslike manner; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects
from which they are drawn; not for the sake of any ornament which they
may impart to the poem; but simply in order to make the meaning of
the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of
the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell
were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of
Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the
monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined
in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles.

Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations
of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never
thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague
idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge
in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born
enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for
an island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian
angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas: his stature reaches the
sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has
described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as
long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome; and his other
limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from
the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, that three
tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair." We are
sensible that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine
poet. But Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand; and our version,
however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning.

Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise
Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the
loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and
tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the
wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in
spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was
such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July
and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan
swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench
was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs."

We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling
precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is
incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately,
taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the
greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante
is the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He is
the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the
second death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within
which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of
the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of
Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy
sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation.
His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would
throw aside such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told
with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its
horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in its details.
The narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante,
as the adventures of Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. The author
of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced
those minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift,
the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about names, the
official documents transcribed at full length, and all the unmeaning
gossip and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and tending
to nothing. We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived,
nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we can easily
abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel
Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and
giants, dying islands, and philosophising horses, nothing but such
circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a deception on
the imagination.

Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency
of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante
decidedly yields to him: and as this is a point on which many rash
and ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined
to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet
can possibly commit, in the management of his machinery, is that of
attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured
for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits must be
incapable. But these objections, though sanctioned by eminent names,
originate, we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of
poetry.

What is spirit? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with
which we are best acquainted? We observe certain phenomena. We cannot
explain them into material causes. We therefore infer that there exists
something which is not material. But of this something we have no idea.
We can define it only by negatives. We can reason about it only by
symbols. We use the word: but we have no image of the thing; and the
business of poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses
words indeed; but they are merely the instruments of his art, not its
objects. They are the materials which he is to dispose in such a manner
as to present a picture to the mental eye. And if they are not so
disposed, they are no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of
canvas and a box of colours to be called a painting.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men
must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages
and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle. The
first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, worshipped
one invisible Deity. But the necessity of having something more
definite to adore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerable
crowd of gods and goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians
thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even
these transferred to the Sun the worship which, in speculation, they
considered due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is
the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by
the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of
having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of
the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with
which Christianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever
acquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feeling. God,
the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few
worshippers. A philosopher might admire so noble a conception: but
the crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented no image
to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking
among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms,
weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the
cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the
Academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the Lictor,
and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust. Soon after
Christianity had achieved its triumph, the principle which had assisted
it began to corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints
assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took the place of
Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux.
The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to Venus and the Muses. The
fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial
dignity; and the homage of chivalry was blended with that of religion.
Reformers have often made a stand against these feelings; but never
with more than apparent and partial success. The men who demolished the
images in cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those which
were enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult to show that
in politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must
generally be embodied before they can excite a strong public feeling.
The multitude is more easily interested for the most unmeaning badge,
or the most insignificant name, than for the most important principle.

From these considerations, we infer that no poet, who should affect
that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton has been
blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure. Still, however, there
was another extreme, which, though far less dangerous, was also to
be avoided. The imaginations of men are in a great measure under the
control of their opinions. The most exquisite art of poetical colouring
can produce no illusion, when it is employed to represent that which
is at once perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in
an age of philosophers and theologians. It was necessary, therefore,
for him to abstain from giving such a shock to their understandings
as might break the charm which it was his object to throw over their
imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indistinctness and
inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. Doctor Johnson
acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary that the spirit should
be clothed with material forms. "But," says he, "the poet should have
secured the consistency of his system by keeping immateriality out of
sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his thoughts." This is
easily said; but what if Milton could not seduce his readers to drop
immateriality from their thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had
taken so fully possession of the minds of men as to leave no room even
for the half belief which poetry requires? Such we suspect to have
been the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the
material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on the
debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has, doubtless,
by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But,
though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he
was poetically in the right. This task, which almost any other writer
would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The peculiar art
which he possessed of communicating his meaning circuitously through
a long succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than he
expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he could
not avoid.

Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to be at
once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante
is picturesque indeed beyond any that was ever written. Its effect
approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is
picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on
the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of Dante's poem,
which, as we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of
description necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents
excite an interest; but it is not the interest which is proper to
supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and
demons without any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan,
ask them to supper, and eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels
are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful ugly executioners.
His dead men are merely living men in strange situations. The scene
which passes between the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still,
Farinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have
been at an _auto da fe_. Nothing can be more touching than the first
interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman
chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover for whose affection
she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates? The feelings which
give the passage its charm would suit the streets of Florence as well
as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory.

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers.
His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not
metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly
beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso
and Klopstock. They have just enough in common with human nature to be
intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms,
marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to
gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom.

Perhaps the gods and demons of Æschylus may best bear a comparison
with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had,
as we have remarked, something of the Oriental character; and the
same peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of
the amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions
of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of
Æschylus seem to harmonise less with the fragrant groves and graceful
porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light
and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths
of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or
in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His
favourite gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven
and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an
upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost
among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend,
half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of
heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to
the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same impatience of control,
the same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters
also are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and
generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough.
He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture: he is rather
too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the
knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer
in his hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. But
Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual
nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which
cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even
exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah,
against the flaming lake, and the marl burning with solid fire, against
the prospect of an eternity of unintermitted misery, his spirit bears
up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no support
from anything external, nor even from hope itself.

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting to
draw between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry of these
great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their
moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their
idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in common with those
modern beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion
of the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their
minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have
been more completely, though undesignedly, coloured by their personal
feelings.

The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness
of spirit; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of
the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride
struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply
and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic
caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged,
the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither
love nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the hope of heaven
could dispel it. It turned every consolation and every pleasure into
its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the
intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey.
His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of
darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness." The
gloom of his characters discolours all the passions of men, and all
the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of
Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits of
him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the features,
noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard
and woful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemptuous curve of the
lip, and doubt that they belong to a man too proud and too sensitive to
be happy.

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he
had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his
health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of
his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at his
entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come;
some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of
oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth
their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just
sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of
a bellman, were now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the
public. It was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing
so fitly as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial,
half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling
in obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene, to be chattered
at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and
Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man,
they might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind
overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor
penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor
abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate
and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high,
but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps
stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or
fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned
from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded
with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it
continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is
incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired
to his hovel to die.

Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life
when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to fade,
even from those minds in which they have not been effaced by anxiety
and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and
delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither Theocritus
nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasantness
of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and
flowers, the songs of nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and
the coolness of shady fountains. His conception of love unites all
the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of
the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet affection of
an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine
scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy-land, are embosomed in
its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom
unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.

Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be found
in all his works; but it is most strongly displayed in the Sonnets.
Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have not
understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There is
none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and
brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic
records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the
public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an expected attack
upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest
thrown out against one of his books, a dream which for a short time
restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed for
ever, led him to musings, which, without effort, shaped themselves
into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which
characterise these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or
perhaps still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble
poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a Collect in verse.

The Sonnets are more or less striking according as the occasions which
gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they are, almost
without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to
which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be
scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the character of
a writer from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which
we have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in
those parts of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are
distinguishable in every page, and impart to all his writings, prose
and poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness.



                               CHAPTER V


His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a
spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of
the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis
of the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and
despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no
single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human
race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English
people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have
since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which
have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand
years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an
unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees
of the oppressors with an unwonted fear.

Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence,
Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need
not say how much we admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise
from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen still think it
unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, and is
less understood, than any event in English history. The friends of
liberty laboured under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable
complained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies
were the painters. As a body the Roundheads had done their utmost to
decry and ruin literature; and literature was even with them, as, in
the long run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on their
side of the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson.
May's History of the Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the
most interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is
foolish and violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused
the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to
say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour
or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the most
popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon, and that
of Hume. The former is not only ably written and full of valuable
information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes
even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume,
from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public
are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that
he hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded
the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate while affecting
the impartiality of a judge.

The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned according
as the resistance of the people to Charles the First shall appear to
be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for
dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and most
important question. We shall not argue it on general grounds. We shall
not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any
government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are
entitled to that vantage-ground; but we will relinquish it. We are,
on this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling
to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who
vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to
give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We will take
the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm, that every
reason which can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be
urged with at least equal force in favour of what is called the Great
Rebellion.

In one respect only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles
venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. He was
not, in name and profession, a Papist; we say in name and profession,
because both Charles himself and his creature Laud, while they
abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices,
a complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of
form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous
veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless
intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will concede that Charles was
a good Protestant; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the
slightest distinction between his case and that of James.

The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly
misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year.
There is a certain class of men who, while they profess to hold in
reverence the great names and great actions of former times, never
look at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some
excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable precedent they pass by
what is essential, and take only what is accidental: they keep out of
sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that
is defective. If, in any part of any great example, there be anything
unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and
dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end has been
attained in spite of them, they feel, with their prototype, that

      "Their labour must be to pervert that end,
      And out of good still to find means of evil."

To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolution these
people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn
recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go
for nothing with them. One sect there was, which, from unfortunate
temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close
restraint. One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced,
that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness, and its
slavery to our freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which
the politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem
to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the
good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of
South America. They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine
Right which has now come back to us, like a thief from transportation,
under the _alias_ of Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland.
Then William is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then
the Revolution is a glorious era. The very same persons who, in this
country, never omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite
slander respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St.
George's Channel than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious
and immortal memory. They may truly boast that they look not at men,
but at measures. So that evil be done, they care not who does it; the
arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, or
Frederic the Protestant. On such occasions their deadliest opponents
may reckon upon their candid construction. The bold assertions of
these people have of late impressed a large portion of the public
with an opinion that James the Second was expelled simply because he
was a Catholic, and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant
Revolution.

But this certainly was not the case; nor can any person who has
acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than is to be
found in Goldsmith's Abridgment believe that, if James had held his own
religious opinions without wishing to make proselytes, or if, wishing
even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting only
his constitutional influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange
would ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew
their own meaning; and, if we may believe them, their hostility was
primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a
tyrant because he was a Catholic; but they excluded Catholics from
the crown, because they thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground
on which they, in their famous resolution, declared the throne vacant,
was this, "that James had broken the fundamental laws of the kingdom."
Every man, therefore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 must
hold that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the sovereign
justifies resistance. The question, then, is this: Had Charles the
First broken the fundamental laws of England?

No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not
merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents,
but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions
of the king himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any
party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles,
from his accession to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a
continued course of oppression and treachery. Let those who applaud
the Revolution, and condemn the Rebellion mention one act of James
the Second to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of
his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in the
Declaration of Right, presented by the two Houses to William and
Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had,
according to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions
of the legislature, raised taxes without the consent of Parliament,
and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious
manner. Not a single session of Parliament had passed without some
unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right of petition
was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and
unwarranted imprisonments were grievances of daily occurrence. If these
things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if they
do, the Great Rebellion was laudable.

But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures? Why, after the king
had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many oppressive
prerogatives, did the Parliament continue to rise in their demands at
the risk of provoking a civil war? The ship-money had been given up.
The Star Chamber had been abolished. Provision had been made for the
frequent convocation and secure deliberation of Parliaments. Why not
pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means? We recur
again to the analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from the
throne? Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too had offered to
call a free Parliament, and to submit to its decision all the matters
in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers, who
preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers,
twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a
national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and proved
tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and is
entitled to the same praise. They could not trust the king. He had no
doubt passed salutary laws; but what assurance was there that he would
not break them? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives; but where was
the security that he would not resume them? The nation had to deal with
a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with
equal facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned, and
never redeemed.

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground than
the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared to the
conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The Lords and
Commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of
his power are marked out. He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargains
to give his assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn
assent; the subsidies are voted; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved,
than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had
bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very Act
which he had been paid to pass.

For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were
theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent
purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised them. At
length, circumstances compelled Charles to summon another Parliament:
another chance was given to our fathers: were they to throw it away
as they had thrown away the former? Were they again to be cozened by
_le Roi le veut_? Were they again to advance their money on pledges
which had been forfeited over and over again? Were they to lay a second
Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish
aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take
their departure, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppression,
their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with
a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a
tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly.

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors
against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline
all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling
testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James
the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest
enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And
what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious
zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and
narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half
the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good
father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of
persecution, tyranny, and falsehood!

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are
told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up
his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and
hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little
son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the
articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable
consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he
was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is
to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his
handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe,
most of his popularity with the present generation.

For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase,
a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man
and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We
cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our
consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations;
and if in that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and
deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of
all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel.

We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on which
the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, he
governed his people ill, he at least governed them after the example
of his predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was because
those privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression
has ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals
of the Tudors. This point Hume has laboured, with an art which is
as discreditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a
forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles
had assented to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppressive
powers said to have been exercised by his predecessors, and he had
renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated
claims against his own recent release.

These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem superfluous to dwell
upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time
are misrepresented and misunderstood will not blame us for stating
the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest statement is the
strongest.

The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue on
the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing
some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily
give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate
the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural names
of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers
revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by
the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides
and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful
windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place;
Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from
the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag; all these, they tell us, were the
offspring of the Great Rebellion.

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges,
were they infinitely more important, would not alter our opinion of
an event which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch
beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the
civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition
been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to
tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued
possession less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism?

If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant and
arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts of cruelty
and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We
should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least
produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character
of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions.
But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a
revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages will always
be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the
ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the
oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to
live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the church and state
reaped only that which they had sown. The government had prohibited
free discussion: it had done its best to keep the people unacquainted
with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and
natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it was because
they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge. If they were
assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally
blind submission.

It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst
of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not
how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally
sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly
liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the
Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation
first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare
and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon,
however, plenty teaches discretion; and, after wine has been for a few
months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever
been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent
fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate
effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on
points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is
just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull
down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the
flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful
irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where
the promised splendour and comfort is to be found. If such miserable
sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good
government in the world.

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of
her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of
a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of
her disguise were for ever excluded from participation in the blessings
which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathsome
aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterward revealed herself in
the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied
their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth,
made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is
Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels,
she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture
to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in
her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her
in the time of her beauty and her glory!

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom
produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his
cell he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to discriminate
colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into
his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze
of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which
have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on,
and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to
reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories
correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend,
and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is
educed out of the chaos.

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a
self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they
are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the
old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to
swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in
slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and
the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous
and hateful in the conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the
cause of Public Liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been
charged with personal participation in any of the blamable excesses of
that time. The favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct
which he pursued with regard to the execution of the king. Of that
celebrated proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must say, in
justice to the many eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice
more particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing
can be more absurd than the imputations which, for the last hundred
and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the Regicides.
We have, throughout, abstained from appealing to first principles.
We will not appeal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case
of the Revolution. What essential distinction can be drawn between
the execution of the father and the deposition of the son? What
constitutional maxim is there which applies to the former and not to
the latter? The king can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as
Charles could have been. The minister only ought to be responsible
for the acts of the sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jefferies and
retain James? The person of a king is sacred. Was the person of James
considered sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army
in which a king is known to be posted is to approach pretty near to
regicide. Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put to
death by men who had been exasperated by the hostilities of several
years, and who had never been bound to him by any other tie than that
which was common to them with all their fellow citizens. Those who
drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his
friends, who first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned him
out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages,
who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to
another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted
his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters. When we
reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the
same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully
conducting his servant William, and for making all opposition fall
before him until he became our king and governor, can, on the thirtieth
of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Martyr
may be visited on themselves and their children.

We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles; not because the
constitution exempts the king from responsibility, for we know that
all such maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions; nor because
we feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think that his
sentence describes him with perfect justice as "a tyrant, a traitor, a
murderer, and a public enemy;" but because we are convinced that the
measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed
was a captive and a hostage: his heir, to whom the allegiance of every
Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The Presbyterians
could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father: they had no
such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also,
contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however unreasonable,
no government could safely venture to outrage.

But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blamable, that of
Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was done.
It could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and the object was to
render it as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for
not yielding to the popular opinion; but we cannot censure Milton
for wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling which would
have restrained us from committing the act would have led us, after
it had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility
and superstition. For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the
thing had not been done, while the people disapproved of it. But, for
the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished the people to
approve of it when it was done. If anything more were wanting to the
justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it. That
miserable performance is now with justice considered only as a beacon
to word-catchers, who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the
man who refuted it, the "Æneæ magni dextra," gives it all its fame with
the present generation. In that age the state of things was different.
It was not then fully understood how vast an interval separates the
more classical scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be
doubted that a treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a critic,
attacked the fundamental principles of all free governments, must, if
suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious effect
on the public mind.



                              CHAPTER VI

We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on which
the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his conduct during the
administration of the Protector. That an enthusiastic votary of liberty
should accept office under a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first
sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances in which the country
was then placed were extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no
vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first
fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted
it, till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it
was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many
deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to
themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon
England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed
by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power.
He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had
at that time been known in the world. He reformed the representative
system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon.
For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but
with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an
American president. He gave the Parliament a voice in the appointment
of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even
reserving to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require
that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far,
we think, if the circumstances of the time and the opportunities which
he had of aggrandising himself be fairly considered, he will not lose
by comparison with Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met
with corresponding moderation, there is no reason to think that he
would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But
when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which
they met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted
power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it
must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy.

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first
honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course
which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force
of circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all
parties, the ability and energy of his splendid administration,
we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his
hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than
the best despot. But we suspect, that at the time of which we speak
the violence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable
and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between
Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That
Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the events of
the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it,
the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was
evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an
admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom
of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national
honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled
at home. And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of
open rebellion provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous
usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in
the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice,
were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from the
theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it
is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that
his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not
been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his
great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded from
a second protector, unless he was also a second Oliver Cromwell. The
events which followed his decease are the most complete vindication
of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. His death
dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the
Parliament, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect
raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in
their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their
own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting
one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future,
they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and
heartless of tyrants.

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days
of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish
talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow
minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king
cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a
viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading
insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the
jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The government
had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to
persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning
courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every
high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch;
and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of
her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace
to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time
driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword
and a shaking of the head to the nations.

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character
of Milton apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed
to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his
contemporaries. And, for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short
survey of the parties into which the political world was at that time
divided. We must premise, that our observations are intended to apply
only to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to
the other side. In days of public commotion, every faction, like an
Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless
and heartless rabble, who prowl around its line of march in the hope
of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day
of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England,
at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish
politicians, who transferred their support to every government as it
rose, who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his face
in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in
Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who
dined on calves' heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as circumstances
altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out
of the account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really
deserved to be called partisans.

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men,
perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous
parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read
them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers
to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were
the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to
the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time
when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men
of letters; they were as a body, unpopular; they could not defend
themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection.
They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies
of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their
dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture,
their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which
they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning,
their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the
laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy
of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should
carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has
already misled so many excellent writers.

      "Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
      Che mortali perigli in se contiene:
      Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
      Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures
through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most
unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen,
who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short
intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England
terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar
fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like
the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that
these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose
courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not
the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles
the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles
the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall,
like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain
only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden
chest which conceals the treasure.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character
from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests.
Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling
Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the
Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection
nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was
with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the
ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship
of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity
through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable
brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated
their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the
greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared
with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on
whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognised no title
to superiority but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they
despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If
they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they
were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found
in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life.
If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials,
legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were
houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should
never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests
they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a
more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles
by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of
a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a
mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action
the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who
had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy
a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have
passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly
causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had
risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had
proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the
prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of
no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by
the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been
darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that
all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm,
inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his
Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional
retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was
half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres
of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of
the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting
fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the
millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his
soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in
the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings
of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw
nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing
from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at
them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the
hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to
civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability
of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their
religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it.
The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on
every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity
and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure
its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and
their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had
made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion
and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of
corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but
never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir
Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down
oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part or lot
in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain,
not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive
the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their
domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often
injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we
know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell
into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant
austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their
Dunstans and their De Monforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet,
when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate
to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it
was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no means
numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which acted with
them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell
was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology
of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to
religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by
the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their
idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their
examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines
of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of
distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and
manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it
is probable, imperceptibly adopted.

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them,
as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We
shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of
the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license and
plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of
Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses which, under
the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never
tolerated. We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we
do that the cause of the king was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we
yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of
the honest old cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them
with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled
to employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the
Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist countrymen
were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and
simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction,
dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valour,
defending without love, destroying without hatred. There was a freedom
in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual independence was
strong within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish
motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood,
and the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as
that of Duessa; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they
were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they defended a false
and loathsome sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all into the
merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or
an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner which
had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers, and
for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides.
Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions,
they possessed, in far greater degree than their adversaries, those
qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices
of the Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy,
generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. They had far
more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their
manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes
more elegant, and their households more cheerful.

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have
described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not
a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party
were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the
Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the
gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas
revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to
itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and
pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like
the Puritans, he lived

      "As ever in his great taskmaster's eye."

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty Judge and
an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external
circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible
resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer
was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions,
their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science,
and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred,
he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental qualities which
were almost entirely monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There
was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer
relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of
honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes
and his associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and
aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which
the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the
master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the
pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the
song of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their
fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure
antidote against the effects of its bewitching sweetness. The allusions
which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers.
The statesman was proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and the
romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will contrast the
sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite
lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the Penseroso,
which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning.
This is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, raises his
character in our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes
and feelings he sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty
to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart
relents; but his hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in
honour. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her.

That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and
peculiar splendour still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself
to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted
himself in conjunction with others. But the glory of the battle which
he fought for the species of freedom which is the most valuable, and
which was then the least understood, the freedom of the human mind, is
all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries
raised their voices against Ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there
were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and
intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the
liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment.
These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most
important. He was desirous that the people should think for themselves
as well as tax themselves, and should be emancipated from the dominion
of prejudice as well as from that of Charles. He knew that those who,
with the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of reform, and
contented themselves with pulling down the king and imprisoning the
malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, who, in
their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the
means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when
they should have thought of disenchanting.

      "Oh, he mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand
      And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed,
      And backward mutters of dissevering power,
      We cannot free the lady that sits here
      Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless."

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties
which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, was the
noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was directed.
For this he joined the Presbyterians; for this he forsook them. He
fought their perilous battle; but he turned away with disdain from
their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they had
vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore
joined the Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular
chain, and to save free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian
wolf. With a view to the same great object, he attacked the licensing
system in that sublime treatise which every statesman should wear as
a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks
were, in general, directed less against particular abuses than against
those deeply seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, the
servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation.

That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more
effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary
services. He never came up in the rear when the outworks had been
carried and the breach entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At
the beginning of the changes, he wrote within comparable energy and
eloquence against the bishops. But, when his opinion seemed likely to
prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the
crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party. There is
no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth
into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever
shone. But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate
the noisome vapours, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who
most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with
which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the credit
of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and
political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body
of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He
stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems
of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the
god of light and fertility.

      "Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera, vincit
      Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi."



                              CHAPTER VII


It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our
time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention
of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of
the English language. They abound with passages compared with which
the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are
a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous
embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the
great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial
works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts
of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic
language, "a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."

We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyse
the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the
sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the
Iconoclast, and to point out some of those magnificent passages which
occur in the Treatise of Reformation and the Animadversions on the
Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks have already extended
renders this impossible.

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the
subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic
of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his
memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we
be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the
offering which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we
seem to be contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred
and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in
his small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath
the faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his
eyes, rolling in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines
of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his glory
and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in
which we should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration
with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the
earnestness with which we should endeavour to console him, if indeed
such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age
unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we
should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood,
the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal
accents which flowed from his lips.

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of
them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any
degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of
idolising either the living or the dead. And we think that there is
no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than
that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to
christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood
the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried
in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the
balance and have not been found wanting, which have been declared
sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly
stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These
great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton.
The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us.
His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the
Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to
the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions of other
soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous
efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to
delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can
study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot,
without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which
his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he
laboured for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured
every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on
temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and
tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and
with his fame.


THE END.





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