the poetical works of john milton

Front matter

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Book I

BookIL ..

.

Book in. ..

.. 338

Book IV. ..

.. 369

•• 417

UAllbgro

.• 447

II Pbnsbroso •

• .. •• .. .

Arcades ..

. •• •• •.

.. 456

Lycidas ..

POEl

^S ON SEVERAL OCCASION

On the Death of a Fj

ur Infant, Dying of a CoUgh

.. 460

At a Vacation Exerci

se in the College

.. 468

On the Morning of C

hrist's Nativity

^ix

VI

Contents

The Passion .. .. ••479

Upon the Circumcision . . . . . . . . . . 481

At a Solemn Music . . . . . . . . • • 4^2

Chapter II. Political Life

At the age of thirty-five, Milton married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, a wealthy royalist, and justice of the peace in Oxfordshire. No account is preserved of the circumstances that led to this imion; but it proved unhappy, and gave rise to incidents in his life which the biographer would gladly omit They had only been married a month when the young bride sought permission to spend the rest of the summer with her friends in Oxfordshire. The request is scarcely less singular than the immediate compliance it met with. The period of Michaehnas was fixed for her return, but she came not; and repeated letters from her husband were even left unanswered. Milton then sent a messenger, demanding her immediate return home, when she at length positively refused to come, dismissing his messenger with contempt From all that appears, the probability seems to be that the fault lay more with her relatives than herself; they seem to have sanctioned the marriage with the zealous republican when their party appeared to be on the wane, and to have repented of the match when a temporary success of the royalists had revived their hopes, the haughty cavaliers being probably somewhat ashamed of an alliance with one who took so active a part against royalty. This at least may be concluded, that she was a young and frivolous girl, little fitted to be the companion of such a man. The reasons assigned in her defence abundantly confirm this : it is stated that she had been accustomed to a great deal of company, with merriment and dancing, so that she found her married life solitary and iricsome, and at length went home to her parents.

Whatever were the reasons for her departure, all attempts of Milton to prevail on her to return proved ineffectual ; and, with a just feeling of indignation, he declared that he no longer held her as his wife. This occurrence set him seriously to consider the nature of those obligations involved in the marriage tie, in consequence of which he published his work on the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, which led him into various controversies, conducted on his part with his usual energy.

Fully four years clasped without Milton meeting with his wife, and he had taken the most decided steps to show his conviction that all ties between them were dissolved. Time, however, had led her to repent of her foolish step ; and learning of his intention to visit a common friend, she suddenly presented herself before him, and throwing herself at his feet, with tears besought his forgiveness. A perfect reconciliation took place between them ; and so completely did he overlook all that had passed, that he soon after received into his own house her father and mother, and several of her brothers and sisters, affording them an asylum there, and exei\^ii^ ^ \\\"5»

political influence in their behalf, when they were involved in the final overthrow of the royal cause.

The pen of Milton was again called into requisition on a subject of the highest public value. He put forth his** Treatise on Education," a work intended to strike at the root of the prevalent system of employing the whole time and energies of the youthful mind in mastering one or two dead languages. Fully two centuries have since elapsed, but so slow is the mass of mankind in receiving the wisdom of its great teacher, that we are only now beginning to apply the sound suggestions which he so eloquently enforced.

Within a year after his reunion with his wife, his family was increased by the birth of a daughter, Anne, the eldest of his children, who was lame either from her birth, or in consequence of some accident in her early infancy. His second daughter, Mary, was bom in the same large house in the Barbican, which had sufficed to accommodate his numerous train of dependent relatives. Shortly after their departure, he quitted this house for a smaller one in Holbom, opening into Lincoln's Inn Fields ; and there he continued to reside, closely engaged in a variety of studies, till his acceptance of the office of Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth rendered a situation nearer Whitehall an object of convenience to him.

In 1649 ^c grand climax of successive civil wars was at length accomplished in the death of the king. Milton was in no way implicated in this act of judicial judgment by the popular leaders on their king; but he viewed with disgust the lamentations of the Presbyterian party for the final accomplishment of the result which they had so long laboured to bring about; and to meet the exigences of the period, he published his ** Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." ** This work," he says, ** was not published till after the death of the kmg, and was written rather to tranquillize the minds of men, than to discuss any part of the question respecting Charles — ^a question the decision of which belonged to the magistrate, and not to me, and which had now received its final determination."

During Milton's residence in his new apartments in Scotland Yard, his third child, a son, was bom, but he only survived a few months. From this he removed, in 1652, to a handsome house opening into St. James's Park, adjoining the

1 I

MILTON ACTS AS SECRETy>RY TO OLIVER CROMWELL.

mansion of Lord Scudamore; and here he continued to reside till the Restoration.

Charles, the son of the late king, anxious to appeal to the courts oi Europe against the judgment of the people of England, employed, as his advocate, Salmasius, an honorary professor in the University of Leyden. It would have been difficult for Charles readily to have found a foreigner at this period well qualified for the task; but in his choice he seems to have been peculiarly unfortunate. This man, though possessed of great erudition and considerable critical acumen, was altogether destitute of those practical talents that were needed for the work imposed on him ; and, above all, he was utterly ignorant of the facts and bearings of the question he thus undertook to exhibit in its true light to others ; so that he was entirely dependent for his materials on the prejudiced representations of the ruined cavaliers.

In reply to the work thus produced, Milton published in 165 1, his •* Defence of the People of England," giving in it one of the noblest instances of self-sacrifice that ever patriotism oflfered. He had already greatly injured his eyes by his protracted studies, and his physicians now assured him that unless he abandoned this labour, he must lose his sight. " On this occasion," says Milton, replying to an antagonist who had made his blindness a reproach, "I reflected that many had purchased with a superior evil a lighter good, glory with death; — to me, on the contrary, greater good was purchased with an inferior evil ; so that by incurring blindness alone, I might fulfil the most honourable of all duties."

The unanimous voice of the Council had called him to this work, and the reception it met with on the continent was such as might have satisfied the highest ambition ; — enemies no less than friends manifested their sense of its power. It was publicly burned at Paris and Toulouse. It was translated into Dutch for the special benefit of the countrymen of Salmasius, to his own extreme vexation ; and while the States- General ordered its suppression as a national disgrace, its author received the highest encomiums from the most eminent men in Europe. Queen Christina of Sweden especially marked her admiration of this work ; but, above all, it completely accomplished the pui*pose for which it was writtew, so that Miltoo's unfortmiate opponent was ntteriy overwhelmed in the encounter. He possessed all the extravagant vanity ok a pedant, and must have felt vnth proportionate acutness his humiliating overthrow. Even his own firiends made it matter of complaint that his work v^as never heard o( while his antagonist's reply was the theme of interest to every court of Europe.

Europe, indeed, seemed to be astonished at the genius thus displayed by one unknown before, and whose work did not win its way to public estimation by the gradual steps of a literary fame, but burst upon it at once with a blaze of splendour. " The scholars of Europe," saj's Symmons, ** actuated by a similar spirit with the spectators of the old Olympian games, threw garlands on' the conqueror of Salmasius;" and the ambassadors then in London acknowledged the universal estimation of the author by official visits.

Salmasius laboured without success to produce an answer to this masterly defence. He died in 1653, the victim, as was generally believed, of wounded pride, leaving it imfinished; and when at length the fragment was published, the people of England had reversed their judgment by a ^^ glorious restoration f* and it was as useless as it was dangerous for Milton to reply.

k

CHAPTER HL

HIS BLINDNESS.

On the 2d of May 1652, Milton's family was increased by another daughter, at the cost of her mother's life. The account of his nephew affords abundant evidence that Milton, in receiving back his wife to that place in his home which she had so rashly forfeited, with the generosity of a noble mind, buried the past in oblivion, though she was probably no help-meet for such a man. Yet their domestic life had been the source of endearing ties; and now, when suddenly bereft of her society, and left with three orphan daughters, his solitude was rendered the more painful by the rapid advances of blindness.

His mind must have been long prepared for this trying affliction. In a letter to a friend about this period, he sa)rs : ** It IS abont ten years, I think, since I perceived my sight to grow ▼eak and dim ;" and he adds that the sight of one eye had **™ost entirely disappeared fully three years before the other ^^as much affected. That which his physicians had foretold ^ now rapidly hastening to its fetal accomplishment, but he "^P^ not at the irreparable loss. He had fallen as the good soldier fells, foremost in the battle-field in his country's cause, ^^ he considered that no unworthy shrine whereon to lay so ^tly a sacrifice. As a Christian, he bore the privation with ^ble fortitude ; as a patriot, with the just consciousness of having deserved well of his country — a debt still unpaid ; for ^^land, proud of the Poet whom the world reveres, has shrank fit)m the acknowledgment of the Patriot's claims ; and the monument that bears his name in Westminster Abbey is more a memorial of its titled donor than a tribute to the memory of England's gifted son.

"It is not miserable to be blind," says Milton, with calm %iity, in reply to one of his heartless antagonists. ** He only is miserable who caimot acquiesce in his blindness with fi>rtitade; and why should I repine at a calamity which every man's mind ought to be so prepared and disciplined as to be able to undergo with patience — a calamity to which every man by the condition of his nature is liable, and which I know to have been the lot of some of the greatest and best of my species?"

So completely unimpaired were his energies, that he contiiraed till the Restoration to dictate all the most important foreign correspondence of the Commonwealth. In this high office he took an active share in the foreign policy of Cromwell, which, whatever bje the opinion formed of the Protectorate as the government of a finee people, is imiversally acknowledged to have elevated England to the highest rank among the kingdoms of Europe — ^to have made her respected and feared wherever she was known. Milton penned the indignant remonstrance that stayed the sword of persecution against the helpless Protestants of Piedmont, as well as the sonnet that reooids their sufferings. He conducted the bold corre- ^[xnidence that set at defiance the haughty bigotry of Spain ; 2 i8 Life of John MULm.

and Johnson cl^y^es his Etarratire of thii period of his life in these terms : — " His agency was considered as of great importance ; for when a treaty wi:h Sweden was artfully sospended, the delay was publichr impated to Milton's indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to expre^ his wonder that only one man in, England couid write Latin, and that man blind."

Like other great genioses, Milton appears to have sought relaxation only in a change of mental labour. His habit was to devote as many hours each day to intense study as his faculties could bear, and he now engaged in this manner on three great works : — a Latin Dictionar}% which, though never published, served as the basis of one afterwards issued from the Cambridge press; a History of England; and his great epic poem.

The dependent situation in which he ni-as now placed by the loss of his sight, and with a young family around him, which his studious habits were alone sufficient to have incapacitated him from taking any charge of^ speedily induced him to many again. He chose as his second wife, Catherine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock, a zealous republican. She proved a most tender and affectionate wife, and Milton seems to have been devotedly attached to her ; but their happiness Mras destined to be of very brief duration. Within the year of their marriage she gave birth to a daughter, and very soon followed her to the grave.

In 1657, he was joined in his office of Latin Secretary by his friend, Andrew Marvell ; and after his severe affliction, he seems to have withdrawn into the closest retirement, only visiting the court or government offices when absolutely called thither by his public duties. He was equally silent as an author for several years. In a letter, written the year before CromwelPs death, to a young friend in Holland, who had besought his influence for him in some public matter, he says, ** I have very few familiars with the gratiosi of the court, who keep myself almost wholly at home, and am willing to do 80."

Milton seems to have felt at this period that the time for using his pen in behalf of the Commonwealth was past Notwithstanding all that has been said on the subject by political opponents and injudicious apologists, there seems no reason to think that Milton disapproved of the general policy of CromwelL He willingly lent his services till the close of the Protectorate, and he was not the man to co-operate in a government he deemed inimical to the true interests of his country. During the convulsions that succeeded, the probability of his wriiing being productive of any benefit was still more doubtful, and he remarked on it in a letter to an old pupil, — ** My country does not now stand in need of a person to record her intestine commotions, but of one qualified to bring them to an auspicious conclusion*"

The crisis that seemed rapidly approaching, at length urged him to make a last effort in the cause of liberty ; and he published, aknost immediately before the Restoration had been determined on by the leaders that now assumed the government, an eloquent remonstrance against abandoning "this goodly tower of a Commonwealth which they had begun to build," fortelling in strong language what proved to be the consequences of restoring the hereditary claimant to the throne. But the courageous effort in behalf of his favourite scheme of a Republic was addressed to unwilling ears. General Monk hall already taken his resolution, and this display of Milton's patriot zeal was made in vain.

Chapter IV. The Restoration

General Monk having perfected his arrangements, and the pariiament concluded their negotiations with Charles II. at Preda, Milton was discharged from his office as Latin secretary. He was compelled to secrete himself for a time in a friend's house in St Bartholomew Close until the first burst of vindictive rage in the triumphant royalists was past ; and the more effectually to screen him from the search that would otherwise have been instituted, his friends spread a report ot his death, and, assembling in mournful procession, followed his supposed corpse to the grave. On the king afterwards learning of this device, it is said to have affoi^ed him much mirth, and he commended his policy **in escaping death by a seasonable show of dying."

In this concealment he remained safe, while some of his old friends expiated their alleged offences by bloody execution, and other cruel indignities, as regicides. Even his public funeral did not stay the issue of a proclamation for his arrest, though it probably prevented any further search. The parliament endeavoured to testify their loyalty hy ordering the Attorney- General to commence a prosecution against him ; and immediately before the passing of the general Act of Oblivion, his two books, the " Eiconoclastes," and the ** Defence of the People," were publicly burnt by the common hangman. The same had been done to the latter work long before at Paris; and now the unfinished reply of Salmasius was published, to crown the whole; it may well be believed only exciting a smile in him against whom these anno3rances were directed.

Fortunately for the honour of England, the name of Milton was not included in the list of exceptions to the - Act of Oblivion ; and, accordingly, on its passing, he left his place of concealment, where he had continued nearly four months, only three days afler the burning of his writings.

He was arrested on his appearance by the obsequious parliament, but released after a time on the pa3nnent of costly fees. From this time till his death, he interfered no more in politics, though ever feithfiil to his cause; he withdrew entirely into private life, content, like Bacon, to leave his reputation to the judgment of posterity.

He had on many occasions exercised his influence during the period of the Commonwealth, in acts of generosity and benevolence to the discomfited royalists. Sir William Davcnant, the poet-laureate of Charles, owed his life to his intercession, and it became a grateful act of gratitude to use his influence in returning the favour. But from this period the few friends of the blind old man seem to have been found among those who, having sympathized with him in his high aspirations for the people's liberty, now mourned over the dissolute excesses in which every hope of it was being swept away.

The account furnished by Aubrey as to the periods at which he wrote the Paradise Lost, is further corroborated both by external and internal evidence. According to him, it was begun two years before the restoration of the king, and finished about three years after that event It formed his solace and occupation during these months of concealment, to which a passage in the seventh book is, with much probability, supposed to allude.

Released, however, as we have seen, from his anxious durance, he withdrew to a small house in the Artillery Walk, near Bunhill Fields; a humble dwelling, suited to his reduced circumstances, where he continued to reside during the remainder of his life.

The poet, now experiencing the premature advances of age, with his name held up to public scorn, his hopes blighted, and his means of support withdrawn, had yet added to all these the bitterness of ungrateful children. His two elder daughters seem to have been destitute alike of affection and pity; and he who was, from his infirmities, so peculiarly dependent on domestic enjo3anents, found there his sharpest sorrows. Such circumstances must almost have compelled him to seek again to supply their undutiful neglect by marriage ; and, accordingly, shortly after this, in his fifty-fourth year, he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshall, the daughter of a gentleman in Cheshire. He is said to have formed this attachment on the recommendation of his friend, Dr. Paget, an eminent ph3rsician of the city, to whom the lady was related.

The marriage was probably rather dictated by prudence and mutual respect than any deeper feelings; but Aubrey, to whom she was personally known, mentions her as *' a gentle person, of a peaceful and agreeable himiour." Her memory deserves to be had in grateful remembrance by the admirers of the great poet; she alleviated his sufferings, soothed his cares, and proved to him a tender and affectionate wife.

It is painful to reflect on this great and good man needing a protector against his own daughters; and with those who have proved so ready to avail themselves of every means of blasting his reputation, and casting a shadow around his great name, this has not been overlooked as a source of defamation. But there is some satisfaction in knowing that he had, in his youngest daughter, Deborah, one dutiful and favourite cVui\d^ who deemed it no cruelty to be required to read to her blind father, or pen for him his immortal works.

The discovery of Milton's will, which had been long sought in vain, brought to light interesting information regarding his domestic life, exhibiting the suffering to which he was subjected by the ingratitude of those most bound to alleviate his misfortunes; while it brings out his own disposition in a re< markably pleasmg and amiable light It may in some degree account for the conduct of the daughters — though it cannot be an excuse for it — that they were early left without a mother, and their father from studious habits and his official duties, as well as his early loss of sight, was unable to take any charge of them, so that they may have been exposed to injurious influence from those around thenu But, however it may be accounted for, their treatment of their f&ther is proved to have been most heartless and cruel

The wiU was set aside from some technical objection, and owing to the litigation consequent on its being disputed, a collection of evidence relating to its author has been preserved, ofanunusually minute and interesting character. A servant gives evidence that her deceased master, a little before his marriage, had lamented to her the ingratitude and cruelty of his children; and it is shown that they had defrauded him in a way that must have been doubly felt by him, not only overreaching him in the economy of the house, but disposing of his books, and often bartering them with the hucksters at the door for any trifle they might offer.

We have already seen the dangers to which Milton was ex« posed at the Restoration, and abundant evidence exists to show that the rancorous feelings of the royalists followed him till his death ; that they exulted over him in his poverty, and rejoiced at his sufferings as marks of the special vengeance of God, and a doom worse than the axe he had escaped.

The following story has been preserved, exhibiting this in a very characteristic manner : —

The Duke of York, afterwards James II., expressed one day to the king, his brother, a great desire to see old Milton, of whom he had heard so much. The king replied that he had not the slightest objection to the duke's satisfying his ctiriosity; and, accordingly soon afterwards, James went privately to Milton's house, where, after an introduction, which explained to the old republican the rank of his guest, a free conversation ensued between these very dissimilar and discordant characters. In the course, however, of the conversation, the duke asked Milton whether he did not regard the loss of his eyesight .as a judgment inflicted on him for what he had written against tiie late king, Milton's reply was to this effect : " If your highness thinks that the calamities which befell us here are indications of the wrath of heaven, in what manner are we to account for the fate of the king, your father? The displeasure of heaven must, upon this supposition, have been much greater against him than me — ^for I have only lost my eyes, but he lost his head."

Much discomposed by this answer, the duke speedily took his leave. On his return to court, the first words which he spoke to the king were, ** Brother, you are greatly to blame that you don't have that old rogue Milton hanged." " Why, what is the matter, James? Have you seen Milton?" "Yes," answered the duke, " I have seen him." ** Well," said the king, ** in what condition did you find him ? " ** Condition ! why, he is old and very poor." "Old and poor! Well, and he is blind too — is he not ? " " Yes, blind as a beetle." " Why, then," observed the king, " you are a fool, James, to have him hanged as a punishment : to hang him will be doing him a service; it will be taking him out of his miseries. No; if he is old, poor, and blind, he is miserable enough; in all conscience, let him live."

The story is so consistent throughout, and so characteristic of the diflferent dispositions of the parties, that it bears internal evidence of authenticity, and exhibits very strikingly the gay and gloomy malignity of the two royal brothers, Charles and James.