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John Milton - Part III.
John Milton - Part III.
Of the other occurrences of Milton`s domestic life we have left ourselves
no room to speak; we must turn to our second source of illustration for his
character, - his opinions on the great public events of his time. It may seem
odd, but we believe that a man of austere character naturally tends both to an
excessive party spirit and to an extreme isolation. Of course the
circumstances which develop the one must be different from those which are
necessary to call out the other: party spirit requires companionship;
isolation, if we may be pardoned so original a remark, excludes it. But
though, as we have shown, this species of character is prone to mental
solitude, tends to an intellectual isolation where it is possible and as soon
as it can, yet when invincible circumstances throw it into mental
companionship, when it is driven into earnest association with earnest men on
interesting topics, its zeal becomes excessive. Such a man`s mind is at home
only with it own enthusiasm; it is cooped up within the narrow limits of its
own ideas, and it can make no allowance for those who differ from or oppose
them. We may see something of this excessive party zeal in Burke. No one`s
reasons are more philosophical; yet no one who acted with a party went farther
in aid of it or was more violent in support of it. He forgot what could be
said for the tenets of the enemy; his imagination made that enemy an abstract
incarnation of his tenets. A man, too, who knows that he formed his opinions
originally by a genuine and intellectual process is but little aware of the
undue energy those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around.
Persons who first acquired their ideas at second hand are more open to a
knowledge of their own weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force
which there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with
the popular feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most part by an
almost inevitable consequence of the feelings which render it isolated. Milton
is an example of this remark. In the commencement of the struggle between
Charles I. and the Parliament, he sympathized strongly with the popular
movement, and carried to what seems now a strange extreme his partisanship. No
one could imagine that the first literary Englishman of his time could write
the following passage on Charles I.: -
"Who can with patience hear this filthy, rascally fool speak so
irreverently of persons eminent both in greatness and piety? Dare you compare
King David with King Charles: a most religious king and prophet with a
superstitious prince, and who was but a novice in the Christian religion; a
most prudent, wise prince with a weak one; a valiant prince with a cowardly
one; finally, a most just prince with a most unjust one? Have you the
impudence to commend his chastity and sobriety, who is known to have committed
all manner of lewdness in company with his confidant the Duke of Buckingham?
It were to no purpose to inquire into the private actions of his life, who
publicly at plays would embrace and kiss the ladies."^15
[Footnote 15: "Defense of the People of England," Chap. iv.]
Whatever may be the faults of that ill-fated monarch, - and they
assuredly were not small, - no one would now think this absurd invective to be
even an excusable exaggeration. It misses the true mark altogether, and is the
expression of a strongly imaginative mind, which has seen something that it
did not like, and is unable in consequence to see anything that has any
relation to it distinctly or correctly. But with the supremacy of the Long
Parliament Milton`s attachment to their cause ceased. No one has drawn a more
unfavorable picture of the rule which they established. Years after their
supremacy had passed away, and the restoration of the monarchy had covered
with a new and strange scene the old actors and the old world, he thrust into
a most unlikely part of his "History of England" [Book iii.] the following
attack on them: -
"But when once the superficial zeal and popular fumes that acted their
New Magistracy were cooled and spent in them, straight every one betook
himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, his private ends before) to do as
his own profit or ambition led him. Then was justice delayed, and soon after
denied; spite and favor determined all: hence faction, thence treachery, both
at home and in the field; everywhere wrong and oppression; foul and horrid
deeds committed daily, or maintained, in secret or in open. Some who had been
called from shops and warehouses, without other merit, to sit in supreme
councils and committees (as their breeding was), fell to huckster the
Commonwealth. Others did thereafter as men could soothe and humor them best;
so he who would give most, or under covert of hypocritical zeal insinuate
basest, enjoyed unworthily the rewards of learning and fidelity, or escaped
the punishment of his crimes and misdeeds. Their votes and ordinances, which
men looked should have contained the repealing of bad laws, and the immediate
constitution of better, resounded with nothing else but new impositions,
taxes, excises, - yearly, monthly, weekly; not to reckon the offices, gifts,
and preferments bestowed and shared among themselves."
His dislike of this system of committees, and of the generally dull and
unemphatic administration of the Commonwealth, attached him to the Puritan
army and to Cromwell; but in the continuation of the passage we have referred
to, he expresses - with something, let it be said, of a schoolmaster feeling -
an unfavorable judgment on their career: -
"For Britain, to speak a truth not often spoken, as it is a land fruitful
enough of men stout and courageous in war, so it is naturally not over -
fertile of men able to govern justly and prudently in peace, trusting only in
their mother-wit; who consider not justly that civility, prudence, love of
the public good more than of money or vain honor, are to this soil in a manner
outlandish, - grow not here, but in minds well implanted with solid and
elaborate breeding; too impolitic else and rude, if not head-strong and
intractable to the industry and virtue either of executing or understanding
true civil government. Valiant indeed, and prosperous to win a field; but to
know the end and reason of winning, unjudicious and unwise: in good or bad
success, alike unteachable. For the sun, which we want, ripens wits as well as
fruits; and as wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must ripe
understanding and many civil virtues be imported into our minds from foreign
writings and examples of best ages; we shall else miscarry still, and come
short in the attempts of any great enterprise. Hence did their victories prove
as fruitless as their losses dangerous, and left them still, conquering, under
the same grievances that men suffer conquered: which was indeed unlikely to go
otherwise, unless men more than vulgar - bred up, as few of them were, in the
knowledge of ancient and illustrious deeds, invincible against many and vain
titles, impartial to friendships and relations - had conducted their affairs;
but then, from the chapman to the retailer, many whose ignorance was more
audacious than the rest were admitted with all their sordid rudiments to bear
no mean sway among them, both in church and state."
We need not speak of Milton`s disapprobation of the Restoration. Between
him and the world of Charles II the opposition was inevitable and infinite.
Therefore the general fact remains, that except in the early struggles, when
he exaggerated the popular feeling, he remained solitary in opinion, and had
very little sympathy with any of the prevailing parties of his time.
Milton`s own theory of government is to be learned from his works. He
advocated a free commonwealth, without rule of a single person or House of
Lords; but the form of his projected commonwealth was peculiar. He thought
that a certain perpetual council, which should be elected by the nation once
for all, and the number of which should be filled up as vacancies might occur,
was the best possible machine of government. He did not confine his advocacy
to abstract theory, but proposed the immediate establishment of such a council
in this country. We need not go into an elaborate discussion to show the
errors of this conclusion. Hardly any one, then or since, has probably adopted
it. The interest of the theoretical parts of Milton`s political works is
entirely historical. The tenets advocated are not of great value, and the
arguments by which he supports them are perhaps of less; but their relation to
the times in which they were written gives them a very singular interest. The
time of the Commonwealth was the only period in English history in which the
fundamental questions of government have been thrown open for popular
discussion in this country. We read in French literature discussions on the
advisability of establishing a monarchy, on the advisability of establishing a
republic, on the advisability of establishing an empire; and before we proceed
to examine the arguments, we cannot help being struck at the strange contrast
which this multiplicity of open questions presents to our own uninquiring
acquiescence in the hereditary polity which has descended to us. "Kings,
Lords, and Commons" are, we think, ordinances of nature. Yet Milton`s
political writings embody the reflections of a period when, for a few years,
the government of England was nearly as much a subject of fundamental
discussion as that of France was in 1851. An "invitation to thinkers," to
borrow the phrase of Necker, was given by the circumstances of the time; and
with the habitual facility of philosophical speculation, it was accepted, and
used to the utmost.
Such are not the kind of speculations in which we expect assistance from
Milton. It is not in its transactions with others, in its dealings with the
manifold world, that the isolated and austere mind shows itself to the most
advantage. Its strength lies in itself. It has "a calm and pleasing
solitariness." It hears thoughts which others cannot hear. It enjoys the quiet
and still air of delightful studies; and is ever conscious of such musing and
poetry "as is not to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her twin
daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with
all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire
of his altar."
"Descend from heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above th` Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing.
The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwell`st, but heavenly born:
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of th` Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee,
Into the heaven of heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy tempering. With like safety guided down,
Return me to my native element;
Lest from this flying steed unreined (as once
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime),
Dismounted, on th` Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn.
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal sphere:
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude: yet not alone, while thou
Visit`st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few;
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revelers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamor drowned
Both harp and voice, nor could the Muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores;
For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream."^16
[Footnote 16: Paradise Lost," Book vii]
"An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in a
small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow-chair, and dressed
neatly in black; pale, but not cadaverous. . . . He used also to sit in a gray
coarse-cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm,
sunny weather";^17 and the common people said he was inspired.
[Footnote 17: Richardson.]
If from the man we turn to his works, we are struck at once with two
singular contrasts. The first of them is this: - The distinction between
ancient and modern art is sometimes said, and perhaps truly, to consist in the
simple bareness of the imaginative conceptions which we find in ancient art,
and the comparatively complex clothing in which all modern creations are
embodied. If we adopt this distinction, Milton seems in some sort ancient, and
in some sort modern. Nothing is so simple as the subject-matter of his
works. The two greatest of his creations, the character of Satan and the
character of Eve, are two of the simplest - the latter probably the very
simplest - in the whole field of literature. On this side Milton`s art is
classical. On the other hand, in no writer is the imagery more profuse, the
illustrations more various, the dress altogether more splendid; and in this
respect the style of his art seems romantic and modern. In real truth,
however, it is only ancient art in a modern disguise: the dress is a mere
dress, and can be stripped off when we will, - we all of us do perhaps in
memory strip it off for ourselves. Notwithstanding the lavish adornments with
which her image is presented, the character of Eve is still the simplest sort
of feminine essence, - the pure embodiment of that inner nature which we
believe and hope that women have. The character of Satan, though it is not so
easily described, has nearly as few elements in it. The most purely modern
conceptions will not bear to be unclothed in this manner: their romantic
garment clings inseparably to them. Hamlet and Lear are not to be thought of
except as complex characters, with very involved and complicated embodiments.
They are as difficult to draw out in words as the common characters of life
are: that of Hamlet, perhaps, is more so. If we make it, as perhaps we should
the characteristic of modern and romantic art that it presents us with
creations which we cannot think of or delineate except as very varied and, so
to say, circumstantial, we must not rank Milton among the masters of romantic
art. And without involving the subject in the troubled sea of an old
controversy, we may say that the most striking of the poetical peculiarities
of Milton is the bare simplicity of his ideas and the rich abundance of his
illustrations.
Another of his peculiarities is equally striking. There seems to be such
a thing as second-hand poetry: some poets, musing on the poetry of other
men, have unconsciously shaped it into something of their own. The new
conception is like the original, it would never probably have existed had not
the original existed previously: still, it is sufficiently different from the
original to be a new thing, not a copy or a plagiarism; it is a creation,
though, so to say, a suggested creation.
Gray is as good an example as can be found of a poet whose works abound
in this species of semi-original conceptions. Industrious critics track his
best lines back, and find others like them which doubtless lingered near his
fancy while he was writing them. The same critics have been equally busy with
the works of Milton, and equally successful. They find traces of his reading
in half his works; not, which any reader could do, in overt similes and
distinct illustrations, but also in the very texture of the thought and the
expression. In many cases, doubtless, they discover more than he himself knew.
A mind like his, which has an immense store of imaginative recollections, can
never know which of his own imaginations is exactly suggested by which
recollection. Men awake with their best ideas; it is seldom worth while to
investigate very curiously whence they came. Our proper business is to adapt
and mold and act upon them. Of poets perhaps this is true even more remarkably
than of other men: their ideas are suggested in modes, and according to laws,
which are even more impossible to specify than the ideas of the rest of the
world. Second-hand poetry, so to say, often seems quite original to the poet
himself; he frequently does not know that he derived it from an old memory:
years afterwards it may strike him as it does others. Still, in general, such
inferior species of creation is not so likely to be found in minds of singular
originality as in those of less. A brooding, placid, cultivated mind, like
that of Gray, is the place where we should expect to meet with it. Great
originality disturbs the adaptive process, removes the mind of the poet from
the thoughts of other men, and occupies it with its own heated and flashing
thoughts. Poetry of the second degree is like the secondary rocks of modern
geology, - a still, gentle, alluvial formation; the igneous glow of primary
genius brings forth ideas like the primeval granite, simple, astounding, and
alone. Milton`s case is an exception to this rule. His mind has marked
originality, probably as much of it as any in literature; but it has as much
of molded recollection as any mind, too. His poetry in consequence is like an
artificial park, green and soft and beautiful, yet with outlines bold,
distinct, and firm, and the eternal rock ever jutting out; or, better still,
it is like our own Lake scenery, where nature has herself the same
combination, where we have Rydal Water side by side with the everlasting
upheaved mountain. Milton has the same union of softened beauty with
unimpaired grandeur; and it is his peculiarity.
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