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 AN ACCOUNT 
 
 -LIFE, OPINIONS, AND WRITINGS 
 
 JOHN MILTON. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION TO PAKADISE LOST. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, 
 
 AVTHOB OF ' MTTHOLOGY OF GKEECB AND ITALY,' * FAIEX MXTHOLOGT, 
 ' HISTOBY OF ENGLAND,' ETC. 
 
 *• Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore 
 Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. 
 Tu sei lo inio maestro e il mio autore," — Dantb. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY 
 
 1855. 
 
K27 
 
 PBINTED BY 
 
 JOHN BDWABD TATIOB, LITTLE QtTEBIT STREET, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 
 
TO THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. CONNOP THIRLWALL, D.D., 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID*S, 
 
 IN EESPECT FOE HIGH TALENT AND EXTENSIVE LEAENIN6, 
 
 IN VENEEATION FOB 
 
 ENLIGHTENED PIETY AND UNSWEEVING VIETUE, 
 
 ASD 
 
 IN GEATITUDE FOE MANY ACTS OF TEUE FEIENDSHIP AND GENEEOSITY, 
 
 QTJig Uolume, 
 
 DEVOTED TO THE ILLUSTEIOUS THEME OF MILTON, 
 IS INSCEIBED BY 
 
 THE AUTHOE. 
 
 785918 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The reading of Paradise Lost for the first time forms, or 
 should form, an era in the hfe of every one possessed of 
 taste and poetic feehng. To my own mind that time is 
 ever present. It was just as I was emerging from mere 
 boyhood ; the season was summer ; the scene a residence 
 amid wood and water, at the foot of mountains, over 
 which I beheld each morning the sun rising, invested 
 with all his glories. The companion of Paradise Lost was 
 the Jerusalem Delivered, in Hoole's tame version 'tis true, 
 but perhaps at that age the couplet was more grateful to 
 my ear than the stanza. The two poems combined to 
 hold me in an ecstasy of delight. Alas 1 that such happy 
 days can never return, not even in imagination ! Some 
 time after — for in those days books were not plentiful 
 with me — I procured the whole of Milton's poetry. I 
 was of course enchanted with Comus, and even then I 
 could discern and admire the chaste, severe, and classic 
 beauties of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. 
 Ever since the poetry of Milton has formed my constant 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 study, — a source of delight in prosperity, of strength and 
 consolation in adversity. 
 
 It is now somewhat more than a quarter of a century 
 since I first conceived the idea of endeavouring to render 
 this noble poetry more intelligible, and consequently more 
 attractive and useful to readers in general. The result 
 has been the present volume, and an annotated edition of 
 the Poems, now ready for the press. In this last, though 
 the notes will probably not occupy a third of the space 
 occupied by those in Todd's edition, they will, I believe, 
 be found to elucidate the text more fully ; for nothing is 
 left unexplained that seemed to require elucidation. I 
 have neither the wish nor the hope to supplant that work; 
 it will probably always remain as the Variorum edition, 
 a garner into which wheat and chafip are gathered with 
 equal care. 
 
 The expositor of Milton should endeavour to vie with 
 Milton in knowledge. Coming into the world nearly two 
 centuries later, it is neither a merit nor a boast that my 
 scientific knowledge should be more extensive and more 
 correct than his ; my task was to go back, and try to 
 place myself in Milton's position with respect to science. 
 Fortunately, in my early days I had acquired a knowledge 
 of Hebrew, so that I have been able to read the Old Tes- 
 tament through in the original. I have not however 
 thought it necessary to follow him into Targums and 
 Mishnas; for I do not think he gathered any poetic fruit 
 in these thickets. With our own old literature and with 
 that of modern Italy I have long been familiar ; while on 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 that of Greece and Rome I have bestowed only too much 
 of my time and labour. I cannot, it is true, say that I re- 
 gret having written the Mythology of Greece and Italy, 
 for it has procured me consideration abroad and, alien as 
 the subject is from the usual turn of the English mind, 
 it seems to have taken a place in our literature. But, 
 though I may have best elucidated the rural poetry of 
 Virgil, and though I look back with pleasure to an ex- 
 cursion to Mantua to ascertain the scenery of the Bu- 
 colics, and to other circumstances connected with the 
 Classics, yet I do most sincerely regret the time I devoted 
 to them ; for it was an act of the merest folly in one un- 
 connected with Schools and Universities, more especially 
 in me, whose views of what is of real importance in the 
 languages and works of the ancients differ so much from 
 those which generally prevail in our seats of learning. 
 From these works I have derived no advantage what- 
 ever, and I have not even had the satisfaction of know- 
 ing in what estimation they are held, as those who read 
 such books rarely give pubHc expression to their opinions. 
 Had I devoted that time and labour to modern literature, 
 the residt might have been widely different. The present 
 volume may perhaps decide the question. 
 
 Though this volume is chiefly intended to serve as a 
 companion and introduction to my own edition of the 
 Poems, it will answer that purpose with any edition. In 
 the First Part, which is purely biographic, I have col- 
 lected everything that seemed of importance respecting 
 Milton, his family, and his friends. The Second is de- 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 voted to his Opinions, among which, since the discovery 
 of his work on Christian Doctrine, those on reUgion must 
 hold a prominent place. Had I felt any scruples about 
 developing them — which was not the case — they would 
 have been removed by the example of the Bishop of Win- 
 chester, who, with that regard for truth and free inquiry 
 w^hich is so becoming and so laudable in a Christian pre- 
 late, has permitted his valuable translation of that work 
 to be published in a form which has given it a far wider 
 circulation than this volume can ever hope to obtain. I 
 will take the opportunity here of mentioning that the 
 eminent prelate to whom this work is inscribed is totally 
 unacquainted with the contents. But he, too, is a sin- 
 cere friend to truth and free inquiry, and he knows that 
 falsehood and deceit form no part of my character. 
 
 The Third Part contains, first, an account of Milton's 
 poetry anterior to Paradise Lost, and then what may be 
 termed an Anthology from his prose works. It seemed 
 to me to be a mere act of justice to his memory to draw 
 these gems forth from the obscurity in which they lay, as 
 forming portions of treatises which possess so little in- 
 terest for readers of the present times. I have analysed 
 two of these treatises, as specimens of Milton's reasoning 
 powers. 
 
 An Introduction to Paradise Lost concludes the volume. 
 In this I have given everything that appeared to me cal- 
 culated to illustrate that poem. Some parts of it may 
 appear to be, and perhaps are, rather illustrative of Scrip - 
 ture. I might say, they are therefore only the more valu- 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 able ; but my real excuse for these, and for one or two 
 digressions in the preceding portion of the Work, is, that 
 I am fond of digressions, and discursive writers are my 
 favourites, and that I thought these matters worth pre- 
 serving, while I have a secret feeling that my literary 
 career may be destined to terminate with Milton. Few 
 readers, I should hope, will refuse to accept of this excuse. 
 The reader of Milton should be acquainted with the 
 state of public affairs in his time. I will here follow a 
 rather unusual course, and boldly recommend my own 
 History of England. I do so both on account of its con- 
 ciseness, and because I believe it to be the only one that 
 can lay any just claim to impartiality. Hume is never 
 trustworthy; Lingard, on account of his religious pre- 
 judices, rarely so, — most so however in this portion of 
 his history. For myself I can truly assert that in rela- 
 ting the conflict between King and Parliament, I did my 
 utmost to hold the balance even, and if it inclined at all, 
 it was to the side of the former. For though I did not 
 cry with Almanzor — 
 
 I cannot stay to ask which cause is best, 
 Yet this is so to me because opprest ; 
 
 still my mind may have been secretly swayed by the royal 
 misfortunes, and Charles perhaps appears to more advan- 
 tage in my pages than he would in those of strict and 
 rigorous truth. But where are such pages to be found? 
 It has not, I fear, been given to man to be strictly impar- 
 tial in history. 
 
 Tn all my works I have adopted as a rule, from 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 which I have never deviated, the principle of acknow- 
 ledging the obHgation when I was indebted for opinions 
 or ideas to any preceding writer. What is unacknow- 
 ledged therefore I claim as my own, though I may have, 
 and probably often have been anticipated ; for my read- 
 ing has been select, rather than extensive, my literary 
 appetite, though fond of variety, not being omnivorous. 
 The opinions which I have given on various subjects 
 have been long and carefully weighed, and viewed under 
 every light ; and thence, demonstration being out of the 
 question, though they may be rejected by those of a 
 different turn of mind, I do not think they can be con- 
 futed. 
 
 Splendid passages, and what is usually called fine 
 writing, will not be found in this volume. I have little 
 talent and still less taste for them, for I have usually 
 found the brilliants to be false, composed of metaphor, 
 paradox, and antithesis. But Truth is simplex munditiis ; 
 the habit in which she loves to appear is simple, chaste 
 in hue, formed to display her fair lineaments and pro- 
 portions, and put on at times with an air of graceful 
 negligence. All that I ever then aim at is perspicuity, 
 purity, and correctness of language, carefully shunning 
 stiffness and affectation, and happy if now and then I 
 can approach to vigour or amenity. I would fain have 
 the idea of the writer absorbed and lost in the subject. 
 
 As in writing this volume I have been actuated solely 
 by a regard for truth and reverence for the fame of 
 Milton — ^years and their attendant evils having nearly 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 quenched my love of fame — and as I live in seclusion, 
 with httle society beyond that of my own family, I may 
 perhaps say without presumption that I am almost in- 
 different to criticism : praise cannot elate, or censure de- 
 press me. To the public expression of either, especially 
 the latter, my ear is little used, and I have long been 
 accustomed to be content with the silent approbation 
 of my own mind. Conscious then of having exerted 
 myself to the utmost of my powers to do justice to my 
 subject, justice is all I ask of any, while to the friendly 
 critic I would say — 
 
 Approve it only — 'tis too late to praise. 
 
 T. K. 
 
 4, 1855. 
 
 CORBECTIONS. 
 
 Page 86, line 14, before should he very soon after. 
 
 Page 259, line hfrom bottom^ after two add or even three. 
 
 Page 292, line 11, omit Dante. 
 
COEEECTTONS. 
 
 My friend Mr. Carruthers, of Inverness, has kindly favoured me 
 with some remarks on this Work. As they are corrective of errors 
 into which I had fallen, I lay a part of them before the reader. To 
 Mr. Marsh, of Warrington, I am also indebted for some valuable in- 
 formation and documents. T. K. 
 
 Page 50. Milton s Letter. — " This is certainly not in Milton's hand- 
 writing : I am as positive of this as of my own existence. It is a fine 
 current clerk-like hand, without interlineation or erasure. Eead the 
 letter, and see a distinct allusion by Milton to his blindness. The sig- 
 nature is not unlike Milton's, but appears to be by the same hand as 
 the body of the letter." — C. 
 
 Page 52. — " Mrs. Foster was right in saying that Milton's second 
 wife died of a consumption more than three months after her lying-in ; 
 the child was baptized October 19, 1657. See Cunningham's Johnson, 
 i. 105, iii. 423."— a 
 
 Page 60.—" The date of the marriage license is 11th Feb., 1662 [-3 P]. 
 — Sir C. Young's Pedigree of the Minshulls in Mitford's Life, prefixed 
 to works, octavo edition." — C 
 
 Page 90. — It appears from the facsimile of the signatures to the re- 
 ceipts published by Mr. Marsh, that Anne Milton could not write, and 
 Mary very badly. There is great mystery about the education that 
 Milton gave his daughters. 
 
 Page 93. — Phillips says, etc. " You have been misled by Johnson. 
 Phillips does not make this statement." — C. 
 
 Page 158. — " In his ' Iconoclastes' he speaks of the infection of Arian 
 and Pelagian heresies, a proof that up to his forty-first year he had not 
 imbibed Arian opinions." — C. 
 
 Page 257. — The right date is 1631. The subject of Beaumont's 
 poem, as Mr. Hunter has shown, was Lucy, daughter of the Earl of 
 Exeter : she died in 1614. 
 
 Pages 267-269. — Donne's 'Divine Sonnets' are formed on the Italian 
 model ; but they were not published till 1633. — Eonsard and other 
 French poets of the sixteenth century wrote numerous sonnets. — Among 
 the one thousand sonnets of T. Tasso, there are two of the same form as 
 Milton's three Italian sonnets. 
 
 Page 383, note f- — This was the orthography of the time. 
 
 Page 434. — " Gods and men," Sam. Agon. v. 545, ed. 1671. " Gods or 
 men," ed. 1680, and all tiU 1747. 
 
 Page 439. — Sirocco is Italian also. 
 
 Page 483. — This is a secondary, not the primary sense of the Hebrew 
 terms. 
 
 EEEATA. 
 
 Page 4, last line, for 1642 read 1612. 
 
 Page 10, line ninth, /or he would relish read would retch. 
 
 Page 28, last but one, for Spenstow read Spurstow. 
 
 Page 60, last line, /or features read fortunes. 
 
 Page 234, last but two, for We read we. 
 
 Page 314, seventh frombottom,/>r 1653 read 1652, dele or early in 1654. 
 
 Page 315, line twelfth, /or 1656, 1657 read 1655, 1656. 
 
 Page 320, line eighteenth, for potentem read potantem. 
 
 Page 387, line seventh, /)r never read seldom. 
 
 Page 452, line seventh, />r external read eternal. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 Page. 
 FIRST PEEIOD. — AT SCHOOL AND AT THE TJNIVEESITT. A.D. 
 
 1608-1632. A. JET. 1-24 . . . .- I 
 
 SECOND PEEIOD. — AT HOETON AND ON THE CONTINENT. 
 
 A.D. 1632-1639. A. iET. 24-31 9 
 
 TIIIED PEEIOD. — CIVIL WAE AND THE COMMONWEALTH. 
 
 A.D. 1639-1660. A. ^T. 31-52 22 
 
 rOUETH PEEIOD. — AFTEE THE EESTOEATION. A.D. 1660- 
 
 1674. A. MT. 52-66 . . ^ 57 
 
 MILTON'S FAMILY 79 
 
 Ann Milton, 79. Christopher Milton, 80. Ann, Mary, and De- 
 borah Milton, 85. EHzabeth Milton, 92. Edward and John 
 PhilHpp, 94. 
 
 MILTON'S FEIENDS 98 
 
 Thomas Young, 98. Alexander Gill, 100. Charles Diodati, 101. 
 Henry Lawes, 104. Samuel Harthb, 106. Henry Lawrence, 108. 
 Cyriac Skinner, 109. 
 
 NOTES 114 
 
 PART II. 
 
 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 ON EELIGION 153 
 
 ON INSPIEATION .... 215 
 
 ON PHILOSOPHY 217 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 on tolebation 221 
 
 on goveenment 226 
 
 on edtjcatton 233 
 
 milton's learning 242 
 
 PAET III. 
 
 WRITINGS OF MILTON. 
 
 I. VEBSE 249 
 
 Paraphrases of Psalms CXIV. and CXXXYI., 250. On the Death 
 of a Fair Infant, 251. At a Vacation Exercise, 254. Epitaph on 
 the Marchioness of Winchester, 256. On the Morning of Christ's 
 Nativity, 261. Upon the Circumcision, 262. The Passion, 263. 
 Epitaph on Shakespeare, 264. On the University Carrier, 264. 
 At a Solemn Music, 266. On Time, 266. Sonnet I., 266. Song on 
 May Morning, 270. Sonnet II., 270. L' Allegro and U Penseroso, 
 271. Arcades, 277. Comus, 279. Lycidas, 289. Italian Sonnets, 
 307. Sonnets YIII.-XXIV., 309-315. Translations, 3] 6. Samson 
 Agonistes, 322. 
 
 II. PROSE 331 
 
 Of Eeformation in England, 331. Prelatical Episcopacy, 346. 
 Reason of Church Government, 348. Animadversions, 356. Apo- 
 logy for Smectymnuus, 360. Areopagitiea, 367. History of Eng- 
 land, 377. 
 
 MILTON AS A WRITER 382 
 
 milton's LATIN WRITINGS 388 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Origin of Paradise Lost, 397. Paradise Regained, 403. Milton and Dante : 
 Paradise Lost and La Divina Commedia, 408. Errors in Paradise Lost, 430. 
 The Language, 436. The Verse, 440. Cosmology, 451. The Ptolemaic 
 Astronomy, 458. Eden and Paradise, 463. Pneumatology, 466. Cherubic 
 Car of Jehovah, 474. Form of the Serpent, 480. Excursus, 482. 
 
PART I. 
 
 LIFE OF MILTON, 
 
LIFE OP MILTON; 
 
 FIRST PERIOD. 
 
 AT SCHOOL AND AT THE UITIVEESITY. 
 A. D. 1608-1632. A. jET. 1-24. 
 
 Family names, as it is well known, not only in this 
 country, but throughout all Europe, are in numerous 
 instances derived from those of places. In every county 
 of England are still to be found — and the cases were far 
 more numerous in former days — famihes bearing the 
 same names with its towns, villages, and hamlets. This 
 however gives no indication of their original social posi- 
 tion. It only shows that at one time they dwelt in or 
 came from that place, and the name was given alike to 
 the homeless vagrant and the lord of the manor. 
 
 In the sixteenth century a family which had derived 
 its name of Milton from a town of that namef (the con- 
 
 * See Note A. at the end of this Part. 
 
 t There are at least twenty places of this name in England. Of 
 these, two are in Oxfordshire, — Great MUton, a parish in the hundred 
 of Thame, and Milton, a hamlet in the parish of Adderbury, within a 
 few miles of Banbury. There is also a Milton seven mUes south of 
 Abingdon, in the adjoining county of Berks. It is this last that Phil- 
 lips, the nephew and biographer of Milton, gives as the original seat of 
 
 B 
 
o8,.. , ... .LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 ._, t ^ i ,, ■ i . _ ' ■ 
 
 traction of Middleton) in Oxfordshire, was resident in 
 that county. It had formerly, we are told, been of con- 
 siderable opulence and importance; but having taken 
 the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses, it had 
 shared in the misfortunes of that party, and been shorn 
 of its wealth and consequence, — the landed property 
 having been confiscated, and the then proprietor left 
 with nothing but what he held in right of his wife. We 
 hear nothing more of the fortunes of the Milton family 
 till the latter half of the sixteenth century, when we find 
 John Milton holding the office of under-ranger of the 
 royal forest of Shotover, in the vicinity of the city of 
 Oxford.* He was, it appears, a rigid professor of the 
 doctrines of the lately dominant superstition ; and when 
 his son, of the same name as himself, whom he had sent 
 to the College of Christ Church in the adjacent Univer- 
 sity, had there learned and embraced the Reformed doc- 
 trines, he disinherited him, and there is no account of 
 his ever having again taken him into favour ; nor is the 
 circumstance very likely, such was the spirit of religious 
 rancour, we may add religious fervour and sincerity, 
 which prevailed in those times. f 
 
 John Milton the younger was thus at an early age 
 thrown, we may suppose, entirely on his own resources. 
 It is not unlikely that the profession of the law had been 
 his original destination ; and now, probably seeing these 
 higher prospects blighted, and being a young man of 
 
 the family ; wliicli lie said was proved by tKe monuments to be seen in 
 tbe cburcli of that place. No such monuments however were to be 
 seen when Newton sought for them. Wood said the family was from 
 Great Milton. 
 
 * Aubrey says he resided at Holton, which is six miles to the east of 
 Oxford, Shotover lying between them. 
 
 t See Note B. at the end of this Part. 
 
Milton's father. 8 
 
 talent and energy, he resolved to devote himself to that 
 inferior branch of the law, the professors of which were 
 named Scriveners.* A friend, who was himself of that 
 profession, having saved him from the necessity of serv- 
 ing an apprenticeship, he commenced business in the 
 city of London, in. Bread-street, near St. Paul's, as we 
 are told.f As was the usage, he had a sign to his shop, 
 adopting for that purpose a spread eagle, the armorial 
 bearing of his family. 
 
 From all that we can collect and conjecture respecting 
 him, John Milton of Bread-street appears to have been 
 a man of much more than ordinary talent. By skill 
 and diligence in his profession, he was enabled to bring 
 up and support a family in credit and respectability, and 
 to accumulate such a fortune as enabled him eventually 
 to retire from business, and pass his days in ease and 
 independence. But he was at no period of his life the 
 mere man of business. Amid his legal avocations, he 
 found leisure to cultivate literature, J and still, more the 
 science of music, for which he had a natural genius, and 
 in which he became such a proficient as to rank among 
 the most celebrated composers of the time.§ 
 
 John Milton must have been more than forty years of 
 
 * The Scrivener would seem (as the name denotes) to have been 
 originally merely a copyist, as at the present day. But in the time of 
 John Milton, he answered to the notary of the Continent, and in some 
 respects to the modem lawyer or attorney. His business was to draw 
 up wills, bonds, mortgages, and all other legal contracts, and to this 
 he usually added the occupation of a money-lender, using his own 
 money or that of liis clients. 
 
 t Aubrey, Phillips. This perhaps is not quite correct, for Mr. 
 Hunter (Milton, p. 10) notices a bond dated March 4, 1602, and 
 made payable " at the riew shop of John Milton, scrivener, in Bread- 
 street." 
 
 X Some wretched verses of his are given by Mr. Hunter, p. 13. 
 
 § See Burney's Hist, of Mus. vol. iii. p. 134. " I have been told," 
 
 B 2 
 
4 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 age* when his circumstances seemed to entitle him to 
 enter into the state of matrimony. According to her 
 grandson Phillips, the name of his wife was Sarah Gas- 
 ton, of a respectable family originally from Wales, but 
 then probably settled in London, while Aubrey tells us, 
 apparently on the authority of her son Christopher, that 
 her name was Bradshaw. This is a point then not easy 
 to decide : it seems strange that a son should not know 
 the maiden name of his mother, or a grandson that, of 
 his grandmother. Milton certainly appears to have been 
 related to the celebrated John Bradshaw ; and the most 
 probable supposition is, that it was through his mother. 
 We have the testimony of her son to the excellence of 
 her character, and her numerous deeds of charity. f It 
 w^as probably from her that he derived his weakness of 
 sight ; for Aubrey tells us that her eyes were weak, and 
 that she had to use spectacles at an early age. 
 
 The offspring of this marriage was two sons and three 
 daughters, named, in the order of their births, Anne, 
 John, Sarah, Tabitha, and Christopher. Of these Sarah 
 and Tabitha died in infancy, the former very shortly 
 after her birth ;\ of Anne and Christopher we shall treat 
 when we come to our poet's family. 
 
 says Phillips, " and I take it by our author himself, that his father 
 composed an II Domine of forty parts, for which he was rewarded with 
 a gold medal and chain by a Polish prince, to whom he presented it ; 
 and that some of his songs are to be seen in old Whitby's set of airs, 
 beside some compositions of his in Havenscroft's Psalms." 
 
 * As he died in 1647, and as Aubrey says that he was able to read 
 without spectacles at the age of eighty-four, he must have been past 
 forty at the time of his marriage. 
 
 t " Matre probatissima et eleemosynis per viciniam potissimum nota." 
 — Defensio Secunda. 
 
 X Todd gives the following extracts from the registry of Allhal- 
 lows : — 
 
 •' The xv''' daye of July, 1642, was baptized Sara, the daughter of 
 
HIS BIRTH. 5 
 
 John Milton, third of the name, was born at his father's 
 house, in Bread-street, on the 9th of December, 1608, 
 and, as appears from the register of the adjacent church 
 of Allhallows, was baptized on the 20th of the same 
 month. It is probable that, as is usually the case, he 
 gave early indications of his genius, for his father en- 
 gaged, as a tutor for him, a clergyman named Thomas 
 Young, a man of learning and piety, for whom his pupil 
 conceived a sincere affection. If we may credit Aubrey, 
 he had given proofs of poetic genius at the age of ten 
 years; and it may have been this, combined with his 
 beauty, for Nature had been nearly as liberal to his per- 
 son as to his mind, that induced his father to have his 
 portrait painted, when he was at that age, by a Dutch 
 artist named Cornelius Jansen,* — a portrait still extant. 
 
 But his father was too wise a man to deprive him 
 of the advantages of a public school, when they could 
 be had without danger to his morals. He accordingly, 
 while retaining his private tutor, sent him to the school 
 of St. Paul's,! which was at no great distance from his 
 home, and was then presided over by Alexander Gill, 
 a man of learning, with whose son of the same name, 
 then usher to his father, and afterwards his successor, the 
 
 John Mylton, scrivener. She was buried the vi*'' of August following, 
 in the church." 
 
 " The xxx*** of January, 1613 [i. e. 1614], was baptized Tabitha, the 
 daughter of Mr. John Mylton." 
 
 It may be useful to observe, that at that time, and till the year 1752, 
 the year began in England on the 22nd of March. 
 
 * Todd tells us, from Walpole, that 1618 is the date of Jansen's first 
 works in England, so that John Milton must have been one of the first 
 who employed him. 
 
 t This, we tliink, may be inferred from his own words, presently to 
 be quoted. Todd thinks that he was not sent to St. Paul's till Young 
 quitted England, in 1623. 
 
6 LIFE OE MILTON. 
 
 young poet became a great favourite, and their intimacy 
 gradually ripened into friendship. At what age he was 
 sent to St. Paul's School we are not informed, but he 
 remained there till he was deemed qualified to go to one 
 of the Universities. From family reasons perhaps, his 
 father gave the preference to Cambridge ; and on the 
 12th of February, 1624-5, he was entered as a pen- 
 sioner at Christ's College in that University, being then 
 just sixteen years and two months old. 
 
 We will here pause and consider the progress he ap- 
 pears to have made in knowledge and literature at this 
 time. He says himself:* "My father destined me while 
 yet a child to the study of polite hterature, which I em- 
 braced with such avidity that from the twelfth year of 
 my age I hardly ever retired to rest from my studies till 
 midnight, which was the first source of injury to my eyes, 
 to the natural weakness of which were added frequent 
 headaches ; all of which not retarding my eagerness 
 after knowledge, he took care to have me instructed daily 
 both at school and by other masters at home." Aubrey 
 says, in accordance with this, " that when Milton went to 
 school he studied very hard and sat up very late, com- 
 monly till twelve or one o'clock, and his father ordered 
 the maid to sit up for him." We are also informed that 
 Humphrey Lowndes the printer, who lived in the same 
 street with his father, used to lend him books, chiefly of 
 poetry, two of which, the works of Spenser, and Sylves- 
 ter's translation of Du Bartas, are particularly noticed. 
 Beside the Greek and Latin, in which latter language he 
 composed in both verse and prose with ease and ele- 
 gance, he seems, even before he went to the University, 
 to have acquired a knowledge of Hebrew ; his instructor 
 
 * Defensio Secunda. 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY. / 
 
 in it being his tutor Young.* Of his Latin compositions 
 at this period we have no remains ; but his first epistle to 
 Young is dated March 26, 1625, only a few weeks after 
 he had been entered at the University. In it he says, 
 " Hgec scripsi Londini inter urbana diverticula, non libris, 
 ut soleo, circumseptus." In l623, his fifteenth year, he 
 had made his translations of the 114th and 136th Psalms 
 into English verse. 
 
 The tutor at Cambridge under whom Milton was placed 
 was the Reverend William Chappell, afterwards Provost 
 of Trinity College, Dublin, and eventually Bishop of Cork 
 and Ross. The genius and the superior acquirements of 
 the young student did not long lie concealed, and they 
 were frequently called into exercise either in prose pro- 
 lusions or in poetic elegies, etc., on the deaths of dis- 
 tinguished persons, which it was at that time customary 
 in the Universities to impose on those eminent for their 
 skill in Latin or English versification. But to the mind 
 of Milton the barren, dry, useless systems of logic and 
 other parts of science so-styled then read at the Univer- 
 sities were eminently distasteful, and he made no secret 
 of his disgust. It was probably this, and some overt 
 acts arising from it, which drew on him the sentence of 
 rustication, which, as he informs us himself, was passed 
 on him in some part of his University career. f It is 
 quite evident that it was nothing of which he had any 
 reason to be ashamed ; and moreover it could not have 
 been of any long duration, for he took the two degrees 
 of Bachelor and of Master of Arts at the regular times. 
 To one of his opponents at a later period, who asserted 
 that he had been vomited out of the University after 
 
 * See his Epistle to Young. March 26, 1625. 
 t See Note C. at end of this Part. 
 
8 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 having spent there a riotous youth, he replied :* " It hath 
 giv€n me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly with 
 all grateful mind the more than ordinary favour and 
 respect which I found, above any of my equals, at the 
 hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows 
 of the College wherein I spent some years, who at my 
 parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, 
 signified many ways how much better it would content 
 them if I would stay, as by many letters full of kind- 
 ness and loving respect, both before that time and long 
 after, I was assured of their singular good affection to- 
 ward me." At a still later period, in reply to a similar 
 charge, he says if " My father sent me to Cambridge ; 
 there I devoted myself for a space of seven years to the 
 literature and arts usually taught, free from all reproach, 
 and approved of by all good men, as far as the degree of 
 Master, as it is termed."! 
 
 In the year 1632, the twenty-fourth of his age, Milton 
 having taken the degree of M.A., finally quitted Cam- 
 bridge. According to Wood, he was admitted three 
 years later to the same degree at Oxford. § 
 
 * Apology for Smectymnuus. See below, "Writings of Milton. 
 
 t Defensio Secunda. 
 
 X Wood says that at CoUege '* he was esteemed to be a virtuous and 
 sober person, yet not to be ignorant of his own parts." 
 
 § This Wood's informant [Aubrey] says he had from Milton himself. 
 The reason of his incorporation not being to be found in the books at 
 Oxford was, he says, that the then Registrar was negligent, and did not 
 put down the incorporations from Cambridge, M^hich were very nume- 
 rous at that time. 
 
SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 AT HOETOIST Al^J) ON THE CONTINENT. 
 A. D. 1632-1639. A. ^T. 24-31. 
 
 Milton's father, who was now an old man, and who had 
 retired from business on a competent income, was at this 
 time, and had been perhaps for the last few years, wholly 
 or in part, resident on a property he had purchased in 
 the village of Horton, near Colnebrooke, in Bucking- 
 hamshire,* the Suburban from which his son dates one 
 of his letters to his friend Alexander Gill.f Hither 
 Milton, on quitting the University, came, and took up his 
 permanent abode. It had been his father's wish and his 
 
 * Mr. Todd was infonned by the rector of the parish in 1808, that 
 the house had been pulled down about ten years previously. Birken 
 Manor-house, near the church, is still said to have been Milton's resi- 
 dence. 
 
 t Warton, in his note on Eleg. i. 50, says, *' Some country-house of 
 Milton's father, very near London, is here intended, of which we have 
 now no notices." In our note on this place we have shown that Warton 
 misunderstood it. It could not of course have been the house at Horton 
 that he meant, yet he immediately after quotes, the date of a letter 
 from Milton to his friend A. Gill, "JE nostro Suhurhano, Decemh. 14, 
 1634," which was plainly written from Horton. Warton also quotes 
 from one of the Academic Prolusions : " Testor ipse lucos et flumina et 
 dilectos viUarum ulmos, sub quibus estate proxime prseterita — si dea- 
 rum arcana eloqui liceat — summam cum Musis gratiam habuisse me 
 jucunda memoria recolo, ubi et ego inter rura et semotos saltus velut 
 occulto a3vo crescere mihi potuisse visus sum " — all which appHes very 
 accurately to Horton, but not to any place nearer to London. 
 
10 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 own intention that he should enter the Church, but he had 
 given up that design. His own account is as follows :* 
 " By the intentions of my parents and friends I was de- 
 stined of a child to the service of the Church, and in my 
 own resolutions. Till coming to some maturity of years, 
 and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the Church, 
 that he who would take orders must subscribe Slave 
 and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a 
 conscience that he would relish, he must either straight 
 perjure or split his faith — I thought better to prefer 
 a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, 
 bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." 
 
 It is not perhaps possible to conceive a higher degree 
 of happiness than that which Milton must have enjoyed 
 during the five years which he spent at Horton. His 
 days were in general devoted to intense and unremit- 
 ting; study, varied by occasional visits to London for the 
 purpose of purchasing books or of getting instruction 
 in mathematics or in music, in both of which he took 
 great pleasure. He corresponded with his friends Gill 
 and Diodati, and probably with others with whose names 
 we are unacquainted. In one of his letters to Diodati, 
 dated from London, Sept. 23, 1637, he says: "You shall 
 likewise have some account of my studies. In a conti- 
 nued course of reading I have deduced the affairs of 
 the Greeks to the time when they ceased to be Greeks. 
 I was long occupied in the obscurity of those of the Ita- 
 lians under the Lombards, the Franks, and the Germans, 
 to the time when liberty was granted to them by Rodolf 
 King of Germany ; from that point it will be better to 
 read separately" what each community has done by its 
 own resources." In this same letter Ik^ mentions an 
 
 * Reasons of Church Government, etc. 
 
HIS STUDIES AND POEMS. 11 
 
 intention lie had of taking chambers in one of the Inns 
 of Court, where there would be a pleasant shady walk 
 [he had Gray's Inn probably in view], where he could 
 enjoy himself with some companions, and more readily 
 pay visits to such places as he might wish to frequent. 
 " For you know," says he, " that where I now am* 1 am 
 cramped and obscure.'' 
 
 Beside the course of historic reading which he indi- 
 cates above, he read the Greek and Latin writers in ge- 
 neral, and probably some of the Fathers of the Church. 
 To these he added the poets and other writers of mo- 
 dern Italy ; and as he was acquainted with French and 
 Spanish, he may, though we have no information to that 
 effect, have studied Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, and 
 other eminent writers in these languages. 
 
 While he was thus enjoying the delights of literature, 
 and storing his mind with various kinds of knowledge, 
 his muse did not slumber. It was, beyond doubt, at 
 this period that he wrote his beautiful pendents, L' Al- 
 legro and II Penseroso. Horton also witnessed the 
 birth of Arcades, Comus,t and Lycidas; and in all 
 probability it was here also that he wrote his beauti- 
 ful Latin poem. Ad Patrem. The whole of the poetry 
 produced at Horton bears strong evidence of the calm, 
 cheerful frame of mind which he seems to have enjoyed 
 while dwelling amid its sequestered rural scenery. In 
 his poems written during the latter years of his resi- 
 dence at the University, and while he was engaged in 
 the study of theology, all is solemn, serious, and deeply 
 imbued with the spirit of devotion ; but in those coni- 
 
 * He would seem to mean Horton, but Hayley says he means the 
 lodgings which he was in in London whence the letter is dated, 
 t See Note D. at the end of this Part. 
 
12 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 posed at Horton we everywhere discern animation, grace, 
 elegance, and sweetness; the tone is cheerful, and the 
 verses replete with rural imagery. Even in II Pense- 
 roso and Lycidas there is no gloom, and both termi- 
 nate in a tone of calm and tranquil cheerfulness. We 
 may say of his Muse in these poems — 
 
 " But such a sadness did her thoughts employ- 
 As lives within the neighbourhood of joy."* 
 
 On the 3rd of April, 1687, our poet's excellent mother 
 departed this life. It had probably been her maternal 
 uneasiness which had hitherto checked his desire to visit 
 the Continent ; and that impediment being now removed, 
 he easily obtained his father's permission to put his de- 
 sign into execution. As he had lately, by means of his 
 Comus, formed the acquaintance of Sir Henry Wootton, 
 the Provost of Eton, who had been for some time ambas- 
 sador at Venice, that accomplished scholar and statesman 
 wrote him a letter of advice and directions for his travels, 
 with an introduction to the tutor, it would appear, in the 
 family of Lord Scudamore, Viscount Sligo, the English 
 resident at the Court of France. Sir Henry's letter is 
 dated April 18, 1638, and in the following month Milton 
 embarked for the Continent. He travelled as a gentle- 
 man, being attended all the time he was abroad by his 
 own servant, whom he had taken with him from Eng- 
 land, f 
 
 At Paris he met with a very kind reception from Lord 
 Scudamore, to whom he had an introduction. At his 
 particular desire he introduced him to the celebrated 
 Hugo Grotius, at that time resident there for Christina 
 
 * Dodsley's CoUection, vi. 310. 
 
 t For the following account of his travels we are indebted to Milton 
 himself, in his Defensio Secunda. 
 
AT FLORENCE. 13 
 
 Queen of Sweden. We are not informed of any of the 
 circumstances of this interview ; but Phillips says that 
 " Grotius took the visit kindly, and gave him entertain- 
 ment suitable to his worth and the high commendations 
 he had heard of him." In truth our loss is probably 
 not very great, for in general little that is of much im- 
 portance takes place at such interviews. 
 
 He only staid a few days in Paris, which probably 
 possessed little to interest him, and then left it, directing 
 his course for Italy, the goal of his desires. Lord Scu- 
 damore kindly furnished him with letters to the EngHsh 
 merchants at the ports of the South which he was likely 
 to visit. We are not informed of his route through 
 Prance, but it was of course the ordinary one through 
 Lyons, and probably down the Rhone ; for instead of 
 entering Italy by the Alps and Turin, we find that he 
 went to Nice, and thence by sea to Genoa. Prom this 
 city, as he informs us, he proceeded, probably by sea also, 
 to Leghorn and thence to Pisa, whence he went on to 
 Plorence, where he made a stay of two months. 
 
 Plorence was then, as ever, the most literary city in 
 Italy. Milton probably had from Sir Henry Wootton, 
 from Lord Scudamore, or from some other quarter, letters 
 of introduction to some person of influence there, for he 
 obtained ready admission to those literary societies named 
 Academies ; and as it was the custom that every one 
 who was admitted should give some specimens of his li- 
 terary powers, he used for this purpose such of his Latin 
 poems as he retained in his memory, to which he added 
 the Italian sonnets which he composed while there, all of 
 which were received with applause. Count Carlo Dati 
 wrote a Latin address panegyrizing him in high, almost 
 extravagant terms ; a gentleman of literary taste and 
 
14 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 attainments named Francini wrote an Italian ode in his 
 praise ; and Antonio Malatesti presented him with a copy 
 of his manuscript poems named La Tina, with a hand- 
 some dedication to him in the title-page.* 
 
 The other distinguished Florentines with whom he was 
 on terms of intimacy were, he tells us, Buommattei, the 
 celebrated grammarian, Gaddi, Frescobaldi, Coltellino, 
 Clementillo, more properly Chimentelli, and others whom 
 he does not name. When some years later he was nobly 
 advocating the liberty of the press, he tells how these 
 learned and ingenious men deplored the intellectual 
 bondage under which they groaned. " I could recount," 
 says he, " what I have seen and heard in other countries 
 where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes ; where I have 
 sat among their learned men (for this honour I had), and 
 been counted happy to be born in such a place of phi- 
 losophic freedom as they supposed England was, while 
 themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition 
 into which learning amongst them was brought; that 
 this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits ; 
 that nothing had been there written now these many 
 years but flattery and fustian." The words which im- 
 mediately follow these are important, as they inform us 
 that Milton had also the high honour of being acquainted 
 with the most illustrious philosopher of the age : " There 
 it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown 
 
 * Mr. Singer, who lias seen this very copy, has given the title as fol- 
 lows, in Notes and Queries, viii. 295 : — 
 
 " La Tina, Equivoci E-usticali, di Antonio Malatesti coposti nella sua 
 Villa di Triano, il Settembre dell' anno 1637. 
 
 " Sonetti cinquanta dedicati all' 111'"° Signore et Padrone Oss""" il 
 Signore Giovanni Milton, nobil' Inghilese." 
 
 La Tina (probably from Una, winepress), Mr. Singer tells us, was the 
 name of the poet's rustic mistress, to whom the sonnets are supposed to 
 have been addressed. 
 
AT ROME. 15 
 
 old, a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking in astro- 
 nomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican 
 licensers thought." Whether this was on his first or se- 
 cond visit to Plorence he does not inform us, and we con- 
 sequently have no means of ascertaining. Our young 
 poet's intercourse at Florence however does not appear 
 to have been confined to the men of letters, for he would 
 also seem to have mingled in general society. It in fact 
 appears from his Italian sonnets that he met there a lady, 
 apparently a Bolognese, who made some impression on 
 his heart. 
 
 Instead of taking the more agreeable and picturesque 
 route by Perugia, he went to Rome by Siena, which, we 
 may observe, was at that time, and long continued to be, 
 the ordinary route between Florence and Rome. In this 
 former mistress of the world he made another stay of 
 two months, engaged, it would appear, chiefly in studying 
 the ruins and the antiquities. In all probability he had 
 brought with him letters of introduction from Florence. 
 Among his literary acquaintances at Rome we meet with 
 the names of Salsilli and Selvaggi, otherwise little known, 
 the former of whom wrote a Latin tetrastich, the latter 
 a Latin distich, in his praise, — neither of much merit, but 
 both indicative of the strong idea he must have given of 
 his poetic powers. 
 
 But his most valuable acquaintance at Rome seems to 
 have been Lucas Holstein, or, as it was Latinized, Hol- 
 stenius, at that time keeper of the Vatican Library, a man 
 of learning, and who had at one time spent three years 
 at Oxford. As far as we can collect from Milton's own 
 accomit, he went to the library either without an intro- 
 duction, or with a very slight one from a person of the 
 name of Cherubini, not otherwise mentioned, and made 
 
16 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 himself known to the learned Librarian. Holstein re- 
 ceived him with the greatest politeness, took him over 
 the library and showed him all its treasures. He seems 
 to have been so much struck by the stores of knowledge 
 and the strength and variety of the mental powers dis- 
 played by his new acquaintance, that he spoke of him in 
 the highest terms to the Pope's eldest nephew Cardinal 
 P. Barberini, who, as we learn elsewhere, was guardian 
 or patron of the English, an office apparently similar to 
 that of Proxenus in ancient Greece. In consequence of 
 this, soon after, at a splendid concert given by this muni- 
 ficent Cardinal, to which, probably as a matter of course, 
 all the English travellers at Rome were invited, he waited 
 in person at the door of the saloon to receive the young 
 Englishman, and almost, says Milton, taking him by the 
 hand, led him into the room with every mark of atten- 
 tion and respect. Holstein accompanied him when he 
 went next day to pay his respects to the Cardinal, and 
 nothing could be more gracious than the reception he met 
 vrith from that prince of the Church. It may be here 
 observed that, beside speaking Latin, which every scho- 
 lar at that time could do, Milton, as his poetic compo- 
 sitions in it evince, was a perfect master of tlje Italian 
 language, and probably spoke it with fluency and ease. 
 During his abode at Rome, — at the Cardinal's probably 
 and elsewhere, for he heard her several times, — Milton, 
 whose passion for music was extreme, heard the cele- 
 brated Leonora Baroni sing, and he repaid the delight 
 which she yielded him with three Latin epigrams which 
 he addressed to her. He also repaid Salsilli for his te- 
 trastich by an elegant copy of Latin Scazontes addressed 
 to him on the occasion of his illness. 
 
 After, as we have said, a residence of two months at 
 
AT NAPLES. 17 
 
 Rome, Milton left that city and set out for Naples. He 
 of course travelled in the ordinary mode, by vettura, and, 
 as he tells us, one of his travelling companions was a 
 hermit, whom we may presume to have been a man of 
 some taste and learning, as he was acquainted with the 
 Marquis Manso. On their arrival at Naples the hermit 
 introduced to that nobleman the young English travel- 
 ler, with whose conversation on the journey he had pro- 
 bably been much pleased. 
 
 To every one acquainted with the history of the un- 
 happy Torquato Tasso, the name of John Baptist Manso, 
 Marquis of Villa, must be familiar. He had been the 
 patron, friend, and biographer of that poet, and he had 
 been the same to Marini, a poet whose birth also Naples 
 claims. He was now nearly eighty years of age, yet he 
 showed the stranger every attention, becoming his guide 
 to all places worthy of his inspection. " I experienced 
 from him, as long as I remained there," says Milton, "the 
 most friendly attentions. He accompanied me to the va- 
 rious parts of the city, and took me over the Viceroy's 
 palace, and came more than once to my lodgings to visit 
 me. At my departure he made earnest excuses to me 
 for not having been able to show me the further atten- 
 tions which he desired in that city, on account of my 
 unwillingness to conceal my religious sentiments." The 
 venerable nobleman wrote a Latin distich in our poet's 
 praise, who repaid it by a Latin poem which left far 
 behind anything written in his honour even by the great 
 Torquato Tasso. 
 
 It had been Milton's original intention to visit both 
 Sicily and Greece, and thus to have explored all the re- 
 gions in which classic poetry had had its birth, and from 
 which it had drawn its inspiration. But while his mind 
 
18 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 was occupied with the idea of the pleasures he seemed 
 about to enjoy, he received tidings of the alarming state of 
 affairs in England;* and aware that a rupture must ensue 
 between the King and his people, he resolved to return 
 and take whatever part Providence might assign him in 
 the impending struggle. " I deemed it," says he, " to be 
 disgraceful for me to be idling away my time abroad, for 
 my own gratification, while my countrymen weiie con- 
 tending for their liberty." Animated with these honour- 
 able intentions, he turned his back on fair Parthenope and 
 set out once more for Rome, though his friends among the 
 English merchants told him that they had been advised 
 by letters from that city that the English Jesuits there 
 were plotting against him, on account of the freedom 
 with which he expressed himself on the subject of reli- 
 gion. In fact, he seems not to have adhered to the maxim 
 of the prudent Italian, communicated by his friend Sir 
 Henry Wootton, 11 viso sciolto ed i pensieri stretli. It 
 may be even doubted if it were possible for one of his 
 open, candid, and fearless temper to have adhered to a 
 maxim of such timid caution. The rule which, he says, 
 he had laid down for himself was, never to introduce the 
 subject of religion, but if questioned as to his faith, not 
 to dissemble it, be the consequences what they might. 
 
 He accordingly quitted Naples and set out once more 
 for Rome, where he arrived in safety, and where he made 
 an abode of another two months, enjoying the society of 
 his literary friends and unmolested by the Jesuits, though 
 never concealing his religion, and boldly defending it when 
 
 * Just about the time that Milton was setting out on liis travels, the 
 National Covenant was renewed in Scotland, and the differences be- 
 tween the King and the people of that country assumed everyday more 
 and more a menacing aspect. 
 
AT FLORENCE AND VENICE. 19 
 
 attacked. He thence proceeded to Florence, where he 
 found himself as welcome, he says, as if it had been his 
 native country. While there he wrote a letter to his friend 
 Holstein at Rome, who had requested him to inspect for 
 him some MS. in the Lauren tian Library, a thing which, 
 he tells him, he had hitherto found it impossible to ac- 
 complish, on account of the illiberal system on which that 
 Library was managed. This letter, which is dated March 
 30, 1639, is of importance in settUng the chronology of 
 his travels. 
 
 After another stay of two months in this capital of Tus- 
 cany, during which he made an excursion of a few days 
 to Lucca, he took a final leave of his friends there, and 
 travelling of course by vettura, he crossed the Apennines 
 to Bologna, and went thence by Ferrara to Venice. This 
 celebrated city detained him an entire month, but he does 
 not inform us how he passed his time there, or what ac- 
 quaintances he made. He had, it appears, been a dili- 
 gent collector of both books and music during his resi- 
 dence in Italy ; and being now at a seaport, and having 
 an opportunity of sending his literary treasures to Eng- 
 land by sea, and thus becoming more expedite for his 
 remaining travels, he took advantage of it, and put them 
 on board an Enghsh vessel, at least a vessel bound for 
 London, where, as he says nothing to the contrary, we 
 may presume they arrived in safety. 
 
 Quitting the then Queen of the Adriatic, he proceeded 
 through Padua and Vicenza to Verona, where of course 
 he viewed the amphitheatre ; and so on to Milan and over 
 the Pennine Alps, i. e. Mount St. Bernard, to Geneva. He 
 does not tell us how long he remained in this metropoHs 
 of Calvinism, but while there he was in the habit of daily 
 intercourse with John Diodati, the professor of theology, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 the uncle of his friend Charles Diodati. Here also he 
 made the acquaintance of Frederick Spanheim, an emi- 
 nent theologian. He thence proceeded to Lyons ; and 
 taking his former route through France, reached his na- 
 tive land in safety som^ time in the month of August, 
 1639, after an absence of fifteen months. 
 
 It does not seem to have occurred to any of Milton's 
 biographers, to endeavour to assign the time of the year 
 that he was in the different cities of Italy which he vi- 
 sited ; yet it is not an uninteresting subject, and we will 
 therefore try if we can succeed in elucidating it. 
 
 It is probable that he reached Florence some time in 
 the month of July, 1638,* for he was two months there, 
 and it is not at all likely that he would have set out for 
 Rome till toward the middle or end of September, so as 
 not to arrive till the period of the malaria in that city 
 was nearly over, and people of rank were returning to it 
 from the country. He staid there, as he tells us, about 
 two months, so he may have reached Naples toward the 
 end of November. His stay there must have been brief, 
 perhaps not more than a fortnight, and he was probably 
 back in Rome before Christmas. As he remained there 
 two months, and was two months more in Florence, and 
 one month in Venice, and we know that he was in Ge- 
 neva in the beginning of June,t he probably left Rome 
 about the middle of February. He wrote, as we havQ 
 
 * As lie left England in May and made only a short stay in Paris, 
 it is difficult to conjecture how he spent so much time on his way to 
 Italy. 
 
 t Mr. Hunter (p. 23) mentions an album kept at Geneva at that time, 
 in which Milton had written — 
 
 " If virtue feeble were, 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her. 
 " Coelum non animum muto dum trans mare curro. 
 
 Junii 10°, 1639. Johannes Miltonius, Anglus." 
 
RETURN TO ENGLAND. 21 
 
 seen, to- Holstein from Florence on the 30th of March, 
 and within the next fortnight he must have set out for 
 Venice, where he spent a month, and so left it in or 
 about the middle of May, so as to reach Geneva by the 
 end of that month or the beginning of June. He must 
 have made some stay in Geneva, as he did not land in 
 England till some time in August.* 
 
 When terminating at Geneva the brief account which 
 he gives of his travels, Milton expresses himself in the 
 following terms : — " Here again I take God to witness, 
 that I lived in all those places, where so much license is 
 given, free from and untouched by any kind of vice and 
 infamy, continually bearing in mind that even if I could 
 escape the eyes of men, I could not escape those of God." 
 Even in his ItaKan poetry, written at Florence, we may 
 discern the same religious tone which characterized his 
 English compositions anterior to his abode at Horton. 
 From his poem to Man so, and from the comphmentary 
 verses of his Roman friends, we may perceive that he had 
 formed the intention and made known his resolution of 
 writing an heroic poem, taking his subject from some part 
 of the ancient British history, as narrated by Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth. Thete is not the slightest reason for sup- 
 posing that the Fall of Man had as yet presented itself 
 to his mind, as the subject of either an epic poem or a 
 drama. 
 
 * We feel a kind of pride at tlie reflection that our own route in 
 Italy, the only time we have been able to visit it, and the time we spent 
 in its various cities, have several points of coincidence with those of 
 Milton. 
 
THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 CIVIL WAE AND COMMONWEALTH. 
 A. D. 1639-1660. A. ^T. 31-52. 
 
 Milton's return to England was not, as he himself (by 
 a slip of memory, no doubt) states,* " at the time when 
 Charles, having broken the peace with the Scots, was 
 renewing the second of those wars named Episcopal," 
 but exactly a twelvemonth previous to that time, and 
 about eight months before the meeting of the Short Par- 
 liament. It is not improbable that his father had dis- 
 posed of the house at Horton during his son's absence, 
 and gone to reside with his son Christopher, with whom 
 we find him living in Reading, at a somewhat later pe- 
 riod: Milton therefore, who had now a large collection 
 of books, and who expected more every day from Italy, 
 and for this and probably other reasons did not wish 
 to live out of London, hired apartments for himself in 
 that city. 
 
 It was probably very soon after his return that he 
 wrote his beautiful Latin poem, the Epitaphium Da- 
 monis, to commemorate the virtues of his early friend 
 Charles Diodati, who had died apparently in the pre- 
 ceding spring, while the poet was enjoying the delights 
 
 * Defensio Secunda. 
 
SETTLES IN LONDON. 23 
 
 of Florence. Though he tells us himself* that "he 
 received the intelligence while he was abroad," his bio- 
 graphers assure us that he did not hear of it till his 
 return. 
 
 Milton was now arrived at the close of his thirty-first 
 year ; the allowance made him by his father placed him 
 at least in independent circumstances ; nature had not 
 qualified him to take an active part in public affairs, 
 for his delight was in the studious shade of retirement ; 
 but still, to live entirely to himself in literary selfishness 
 would in his eyes have been a gross dereliction of duty. 
 "Things," says he,t "being in such a disturbed and 
 fluctuating state, I looked about to see if I could get 
 any place that would hold myself and my books, and so 
 I took a house of sufficient size in the city ; and there, 
 with no small delight, I resumed my intermitted studies ; 
 cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to God, 
 and then to those to whom the people had committed 
 that task." We may here observe, that the house of 
 which he speaks was not his first residence in London 
 after his return from the Continent. His nephew in- 
 forms us, that he took apartments (probably the whole 
 upper part of the house) in the house of one Russell, a 
 tailor, in St. Bride's churchyard. Fleet-street. As his 
 sister, Mrs. Phillips, had married a second time, and per- 
 haps was not in very affluent circumstances, he kindly 
 undertook to relieve her of the burden of her younger 
 son John, then a smart clever boy of nine years of age, 
 taking him " to his own charge and care," as his other 
 
 * " Thyrsis, animi causa profectus peregre, de obitu Damonis nun- 
 cium accepit. Demum postea reversus, et rem ita esse comperto, se 
 suamque solitudinem hoc carmine deplorat." — Argum. Epit. Damords. 
 
 t Defensio Secunda. 
 
24 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 nephew expresses it, — that is, keeping and educating him 
 at his own expense. 
 
 He did not remain long in these lodgings, for finding 
 them too confined, or more probably being, as we shall 
 see, urged by his friends to extend his sphere of useful- 
 ness, he left them some time early in 1640, and took 
 what was called a garden-house, — i. e. a house standing 
 detached in an enclosed garden, of which there were 
 many such at that time in London. It stood at the end 
 of an entry in Aldersgate-street, " and therefore," says 
 Phillips, " the fitter for his turn by the reason of the pri- 
 vacy, besides that there were few streets in London more 
 free from noise than that."* Here his elder nephew 
 Edward Phillips was, he tells us, "put to board with 
 him ;" and, in addition to his nephews, he was induced 
 to receive a few more pupils, the sons of his intimate 
 friends, for whom we are to suppose he was liberally re- 
 munerated. We are not informed of the number or 
 the names of these, but the number of course could not 
 have been large. 
 
 His course of education was a very extensive one, by 
 far too much so for the ordinary order of minds. But 
 it was also, in our opinion, an erroneous one; as, by 
 putting authors of an inferior order into the hands of 
 youth, the opportunity of forming a pure and correct 
 taste was lost, and by giving the preference to works of 
 science, the culture of the imagination, which is such a 
 source of pure happiness at all periods of life, was nearly 
 altogether neglected. Where a poet was the teacher, 
 
 * Mr. Hunter (Milton, p. 26) having given tlie names of those who 
 lived in the same street, among whom was Milton's old master Dr. Gill 
 and Sir Thomas Cecil, observes that " Milton's house was situated in 
 what, in modern phrase, would be called a genteel part of the town." 
 
HIS COURSE OF EDUCATION. 25 
 
 one might have expected that Homer, Virgil, " the lofty 
 grave tragedians," Horace, and Ovid, would have stood 
 in the foremost rank. But no ; their names do not 
 even occur in the list of authors given by Phillips, as 
 those read by himself and his fellow-pupils under the eye 
 of the author of Comus. These were {credite posteri I), 
 in Latin, the four Scriptores Rei Rusticse, Cato, Varro, 
 Palladius, and Columella ; great part of Pliny's Natural 
 History, the medical work of Celsus, Vitruvius, and the 
 Stratagems of Frontinus : to these prose works were 
 added the philosophic poets Lucretius and Manilius. 
 Such was the Latin course ; the Greek was, from its 
 very nature, somewhat better. It consisted of Hesiod 
 (probably only the Works and Days), Aratus, Dionysius' 
 Periegesis, Oppian, Quintus Smyrnaeus, and Apollonius 
 Rhodius in poetry ; while the prose course contained 
 Plutarch's Placita Philosophorum and On the Educa- 
 tion of Children, Xenophon's Cyropsedia and Ana- 
 basis, Elian's Tactics, and the Stratagems of Poly- 
 aenus. Surely a more preposterous selection never was 
 made ! Some of these works even must have been 
 unintelligible to master and pupils alike ; such, for ex- 
 ample, were the agricultural writers, which can only be 
 understood by one who has a practical acquaintance 
 with agriculture. It seems strange, by the way, that 
 Virgil's Georgics should not have been included in the 
 course. But in it, with one or two exceptions, there is 
 no poet much above mediocrity, and not a single orator 
 or historian. 
 
 But this by no means completed the course. Milton 
 taught his pupils the Hebrew language, and its kindred 
 dialects the Chaldee and the Syriac, so far as to " go 
 through the Pentateuch, and gain an entrance into the 
 
26 LIFE OE MILTON. 
 
 Targum/' and they read some chapters of St. Matthew's 
 Gospel in Syriac. He also instructed them in mathe- 
 matics and astronomy, — the latter, we fear, on the Ptole- 
 maic system.* It must be mentioned to his praise, that 
 he did not neglect the modern languages, for he gave 
 them instructions in both French and Italian ; yet here 
 too he adopted the same perverse course, for the book 
 which he read with them in Italian was the Florentine 
 History of Giovanni Villani, and, in French, a great part 
 of Pierre Davitz, the famous geographer of France in his 
 time. A very laudable portion of his course must not 
 be omitted. Every Sunday his pupils read a chapter of 
 the New Testament in Greek, which he then expounded 
 to them ; a less useful part was their writing, from his 
 dictation, a portion of a system of divinity which he 
 had compiled from the writings of Fagius and other 
 theologians. 
 
 In his treatment of his pupils, x'^.ubrey says, "As he 
 was severe on one hand, so he was most familiar and 
 free in his conversation to those whom he must serve in 
 the way of education;" an account likely enough to be 
 the truth. He set them an example of hard labour and 
 spare diet; but once in every three or four weeks he 
 used to relax and give himself a day of indulgence with 
 some young gentlemen of his acquaintance, " the chief 
 of whom were Mr. Alphry and Mr. Miller, the beaux of 
 those times, but nothing near so bad as those nowa- 
 days," writes Phillips after the Revolution ; " with these 
 gentlemen he made so far free with his body as now and 
 then to keep a gaudy day." 
 
 * Tlie works named by Phillips are: "Uestitius his Arithmetic, 
 Riff's Geometry, Pitiscus his Trigonometry, and Johannes De Sacro 
 Bosco De Sphsera." 
 
HIS COURSE OF EDUCATION. 27 
 
 It has never seemed to enter into the mind of any of 
 Milton's biographers to inquire how he, a single young 
 man, could have kept house with such a number of pu- 
 pils. Neither PhilKps nor Aubrey gives a hint on the 
 subject ; but the most probable and rational supposition 
 would be, that he had engaged some pious and respect- 
 able matron to act as his housekeeper and manager, and 
 relieve him from domestic cares.* 
 
 Johnson, — who omits no occasion of showing his hos- 
 tility to Milton, who differed so very widely from him in 
 religion and politics, and whose views in both, if not 
 more correct and practical, were as much more elevated 
 as those of a great poet should be over those of a mere 
 moralist, — sneeringly inquires, what man of eminent 
 knowledge and talents proceeded from " this wonder- 
 working academy." As this objection goes on the theory 
 of man's being the mere creature of education, it is a 
 sufficient reply to observe, that such is not the case, that 
 doctrina sed vim promovet insitam is the truth, and that 
 if nature has not given the original powers, no teacher 
 can bring them into existence. We have however no 
 reason to suppose that Milton's pupils were not superior 
 to what they would have been, if educated at one of the 
 great public schools. Phillips very candidly and justly 
 observes : " If his pupils had received \i. e. had been 
 capable of receiving] his documents with the same acute- 
 ness of wit and apprehension, the same industry, ala- 
 crity, and thirst after knowledge, as the instructor was 
 
 * This view appears to be confirmed by a record in the Exchequer 
 (quoted by Mr. Hunter, p. 25) of the names, etc., of the inhabitants of 
 the ward of Aldersgate, in 1G41, in which occurs " Jo. Milton, Gent., 
 Jane Yates his servant," and she is the only servant whose name is 
 mentioned, perhaps as being of a higher order. 
 
28 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 indued with, what prodigies of wit* and learning might 
 they have proved !"t 
 
 While Milton was thus engaged in training the mind 
 of youth, and instilling into it principles of piety and 
 virtue, the civil and religious despotism under which 
 men had groaned for years reached its close. The mon- 
 arch, foiled in his efforts to impose this double yoke on 
 his northern subjects, found it necessary to call a Par- 
 liament; and on the 3rd of November, 1640, the Long 
 Parliament met at Westminster. Soon were seen Straf- 
 ford and Laud, the great upholders of the twin despot- 
 ism, the one perishing on the block, the other a close 
 prisoner in the Tower. Men now might speak and write 
 without danger ; and Milton was one of the first to 
 break the silence. In the early part, as it would appear, 
 of 1641, he published a treatise named Of Reformation 
 in England, and the Causes that hitherto have hindered 
 it; in two books, written to a Priend. In this same 
 year the learned and excellent Hall, Bishop of Norwich, 
 published, at the request of Laud, An humble Remon- 
 strance in favour of Episcopacy ; which institution Mil- 
 ton had vigorously assailed. To this an answer was writ- 
 ten under the title of Smectymnuus (a word composed 
 out of the initials of their names), by five Puritan mi- 
 nisters.! Archbishop Ussher, renowned for learning and 
 integrity, then published in reply. The Apostolical In- 
 stitution of Episcopacy; and Milton, whose former tutor 
 
 * Wit at that time, and perhaps down to the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, retained its original Anglo-Saxon sense of mind, talent, and 
 answered to the French esprit. 
 
 t Aubrey says, that in a year's time he made his nephews capable of 
 interpreting a Latin author at sight. 
 
 X Stephen Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew 
 Newcomen, and William Spenstow. Tlie w in this last was resolved 
 into two ws. 
 
CONTROVERSIAL WRITINGS. 29 
 
 and friend was one of the Smectymnuans, again buckled 
 on his controversial armour, to engage this doughty cham- 
 pion of prelacy. He published in reply to him, first, a 
 treatise Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and then The Rea- 
 sons of Church Government urged against Episcopacy. 
 Bishop Hall now produced a defence of his Remonstrance 
 in reply to Smectymnuus ; on which Milton wrote Ani- 
 madversions. Such was the state of the controversy at 
 the close of the year 1641. In the following year ap- 
 peared an anonymous reply to the Animadversions, under 
 the title of A Modest Confutation against a Slanderous 
 and Scurrilous Libel, written, as was generally believed, 
 by a son of Bishop Hall's. As in this very intemperate 
 production Milton's private character was assailed, he 
 took occasion to vindicate it in his reply named An 
 Apology for Smectymnuus. With this the controversy 
 terminated. The question which had occupied it, namely 
 the divine origin and the authority of Episcopacy, had 
 been by this time settled in a somewhat different manner 
 by the Parliament. 
 
 We do not conceive ourselves to be called on to enter 
 into this controversy, or to give any opinion on the sub- 
 ject. In learning Ussher, in wit and literary talent Hall, 
 were, in Milton's own opinion, superior to their antago- 
 nists, and therefore, he says, he came to theii* aid. But 
 such controversies are to be decided neither by learning 
 nor by wit ; the truth is only to be arrived at by the ap- 
 plication of just rules of logic and sound principles of 
 interpretation ; things never in much favour with con- 
 troversialists we must confess, and never less so than at 
 that time, when he who could bring into the field the 
 largest park of book-artillery and of authorities was ge- 
 nerally regarded as the victor. 
 
30 LIFE or MILTON. 
 
 Milton thus gives his reasons for engaging in the con- 
 troversy.* " As soon as Hberty, at least of speech, began 
 to be conceded, all mouths were opened against the bi- 
 shops ; some complained of the faults of the men, others 
 of those of the order itself, and that we alone differed 
 from all the other Reformed churches, and said that the 
 Church ought to be guided after the example of our 
 brethren, but chiefly after the Word of God. Aroused 
 at this when I saw the true path to liberty taken, and 
 men proceeding in the best manner from this beginning, 
 with these steps, to free from servitude the whole of 
 human life, if a discipline originating in religion should 
 flow to the manners and institutions of the Common- 
 wealth ; when even from my younger days I had so 
 prepared myself that above all things I should not be 
 ignorant of anything relating to divine or human laws, 
 and had asked myself if ever I should be of any use 
 if I were now wanting to my country, nay, rather to the 
 Church and to so many brethren who were exposing 
 themselves to danger for the sake of the Gospel, — I 
 resolved, although I was then meditating some other 
 things, to transfer hither all my mental power and in- 
 dustry." 
 
 It would appear that it was toward the end of this 
 year, when the royal forces had advanced to Brentford, 
 that Milton wrote his sonnet " Captain or Colonel," etc. 
 
 The year 1643 found Milton at rest from religious 
 controversy, and only occupied with his pupils. We 
 may now therefore suppose him to be revolving in his 
 mind the great poetic work of which he had already 
 given so many intimations, particularly that splendid 
 one in the Apology for Smectymnuus ; his daily and 
 
 * Defensio Secunda. 
 
HIS MARRIAGE. 31 
 
 nightly thoughts dwelHng habitually on the Muses' hill, 
 and thence perhaps at times taking their flight to the 
 highest heaven of heavens, absorbed in dreams of svreet 
 sounds and splendid visions. But, alas for poor human 
 nature! he had at this time ideas of a far more sublu- 
 nary character, for in this eventful year the quiet garden- 
 house in Aldersgate-street was destined to receive a new 
 inmate. " About Whitsuntide," says Phillips, " he took 
 a journey into the country, nobody about him certainly 
 knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey 
 of recreation. After a month's stay home he returns 
 a married man, who set out a bachelor ; his wife being 
 Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Eichard Powell, then 
 a Justice of the Peace, of Forest Hill, near Shotover, in 
 Oxfordshire." If we had only this account to guide us, 
 we might say that his marriage was a very precipitate 
 affair indeed, one of those to which the old saying, 
 " Marry in haste and repent at leisure," would apply in 
 its full force. But we have reason to suppose that this 
 was by no means the exact state of the case, and that he 
 had long been well-acquainted with the young lady and 
 her family. 
 
 Before we proceed to the consideration of this matter, 
 we must direct the reader's attention to the circumstance 
 of how very little the Civil War seems to have interfered 
 with the relations of social and domestic life. At this 
 time London was the head-quarters of the Parliament, 
 and Oxford those of the King. We might therefore be 
 inclined to regard them as the respective capitals of 
 two belligerent states, between which all civil intercourse 
 had ceased. But not so. We find Milton, a strenuous 
 Parhamentarian, setting out from London as if on a mere 
 country excursion, going through Oxford to the house of 
 
32 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 a Royalist, marrying his daughter, remaining there for a 
 month, and then taking her back with him to London, 
 accompanied by many members of her family. Such 
 was the mild and gentle spirit in which that noble civil 
 contest was conducted !"* 
 
 From the Royalists' Composition Papers, published in 
 1826, it appears that on the 11th of June, 1627, Ri- 
 chard Powell, of Porest Hill, in the county of Oxford, 
 gent., and William Hearne, of London, citizen and gold- 
 smith, did by their writing or recognizance of the na- 
 ture of a statute-staple acknowledge themselves to owe 
 unto John Milton, then of the University of Cambridge, 
 gent., son of John Milton, citizen and scrivener of Lon- 
 don, the sum of £500, which statute was defeazanced 
 for the payment to John Milton, the son, of £312 on the 
 12th of December then next ensuing. As Milton was 
 in his nineteenth year at the time, we are to suppose that 
 this sum was intended to defray the expenses of the re- 
 mainder of his time at the University ; and it raises our 
 opinion of his father when we find him thus, to a cer- 
 tain extent, making his son independent of him at that 
 early age. We also learn from this transaction that John 
 Milton, when cast off by his father, did not sever all 
 connection with his native county, from which possibly 
 much of his business came ; for the Powells and Mil- 
 
 * See in our History of England the letter of Sir William Waller 
 to his "noble friend" Sir E-alph Hopton, on the breaking out of the 
 war. 
 
 " Oh, gran bonta de' cavalieri antiqui ! 
 Eran rivali, eran di fe diversi, 
 E si sentian degli aspri colpi iniqui 
 Per tutta la persona anco dolersi ; 
 E pur per selve oscure e calli obliqui 
 Insieme van senza sospetto aversi." — Orl. Fur. i. 22. 
 
HIS MARRIAGE. 33 
 
 tons, being such close neighbours,* had probably been 
 always on terms of intimacy. Hence perhaps, when Mr. 
 Powell, of Porest Hill, was in want of money, he applied 
 to his old acquaintance the London scrivener. 
 
 Mr. Powell never paid this debt ; for in 1650-51 we 
 find Milton asserting on oath, that he had received only 
 about £180, ''in part of satisfaction of his said just and 
 principal debt, with damages for the same, and his costs 
 of suit." We may then suppose that, while residing at 
 Horton, he had to take many a ride over to Porest Hill, 
 and that on his return from the Continent he must have 
 gone down there more than once to try to get his money. 
 He therefore, it is probable, had known Mary Powell from 
 the time she was a child. Whether Milton's father ap- 
 proved of his choice or not, we have no means of deter- 
 mining ; it would however appear that he gave no oppo- 
 sition. The bridegroom was now in his thirty-fifth year ; 
 the bride was perhaps a dozen years or more younger. 
 
 Milton was to have had a fortune of £1000 with his 
 wife, no contemptible sum in those days. But he never 
 got a shilling of it, owing, as we may suppose, to the 
 ruin brought on Mr. Powell by the war. What the per- 
 sonal attractions of the bride were we are not informed, 
 but in all likelihood they were not very great ; for the 
 imagination of poets ' sees Helen's beauty in a brow of 
 Egypt,' and the objects of their afifection are often but 
 scantily furnished by Nature with external charms. As 
 to her mind, it was apparently of no high order ; and she 
 seems to have been one of those women, — more common 
 in England than perhaps in any other country, — of a dull, 
 sluggish temperament, with little powers of conversation, 
 
 * Forest Hill is not four miles from Oxford, and Shotover lies directly 
 between them. 
 
34 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 and requiring strong external excitement, — such as dan- 
 cing, for example, — to rouse them to anything like en- 
 joyment. In the works which we shall presently notice 
 he says, evidently alluding to his wife, that " the bashful 
 muteness of a virgin may oftentimes hide all the unloveli- 
 ness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversa- 
 tion ;" and he hints that he had discerned this defect in 
 her previous to his marriage, but that her friends had 
 glossed it over. He also speaks of a " mute and spirit- 
 less mate;" and again, puts the case of a man who 
 " shall find himself bound fast to an image of earth and 
 phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a 
 sweet and gladsome society." 
 
 In the course of the summer Milton returned with 
 his bride to his house and pupils in London. " Some 
 few of her nearest relations," says Phillips, " accompanied 
 the bride to her new habitation, which, by reason the 
 father nor anybody else were yet come, was able to re- 
 ceive them ; where the feasting held for some days in 
 celebration of the nuptials, and for entertainment of the 
 bride's friends." A few weeks after there came an in- 
 vitation to her from her family, probably suggested by 
 herself, to go back and spend some time in the coun- 
 try. To this apparently unreasonable request her hus- 
 band gave a willing consent, only desiring her to be 
 back at Michaelmas. The period fixed arrived, but no 
 sign of the return of Mrs. Milton. Her husband wrote 
 again and again, but his letters were unanswered; he 
 then sent a special messenger, " who, to the best of my 
 remembrance," says Phillips, " reported that he was dis- 
 missed with some sort of contempt ;" and thus all the 
 poet's perhaps high-built hopes of conjugal felicity were 
 rudely cast down and scattered to the winds. 
 
DESERTlt)N BY HIS WIFE. 35 
 
 In the above quotation from Phillips, it is observed 
 that his father had not at that time come to reside vi^ith 
 him. We have seen that the old gentleman lived at 
 Reading, with his younger son ; but in the preceding 
 month of April this town had surrendered to the troops 
 of the Earl of Essex ; and the derangement in the affairs 
 of Christopher Milton caused by this event, probably 
 making it inconvenient for his father to remain with him 
 any longer, he came and took up his abode in the house 
 of his eldest son in London. Of the exact time of his 
 coming we are not informed, but it was probably after 
 the departure of his daughter-in-law. Phillips says that 
 " the old gentleman lived wholly retired to his rest and 
 devotion, without the least trouble imaginable." 
 
 To return to our poet's connubial affairs. Various 
 reasons have been assigned for this most extraordinary 
 conduct of Mrs. Milton and her family. Phillips, who 
 we are to recollect was living in his uncle's house at the 
 time, explains it in the following manner : " The family," 
 he says, " being generally addicted to the Cavalier party, 
 and some of them possibly engaged in the King's ser- 
 vice, — who by this time had his head- quarters at Oxford, 
 and was in some prospect of success, — they began to re- 
 pent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the 
 family to a person so contrary to them in opinion ; and 
 thought that it "would be a blot on their escutcheon when- 
 ever that Court should come to flourish again." In this 
 way he tries to account for the conduct of her family ; 
 with respect to his young aunt herself, he intimates that 
 the quiet and seclusion of her husband's abode were not 
 agreeable to one who had been used to the rude merri-. 
 ment and joviality of the house of a country squire of 
 those days. Aubrey's account is, that she "was brought 
 
 D 2 
 
36 LIFE OF MILfON. 
 
 up and bred where there was a great deal of company 
 and merriment, as dancing, etc. ; and when she came 
 to live with her husband she found it solitary ; no com- 
 pany came to her ; and she often heard her nephews cry 
 and be beaten. This life was irksome to her, and so she 
 went to her parents ; he sent for her home after some 
 time. As for wronging his bed, I never heard the least 
 suspicion of that; nor had he of that any jealousy." 
 When to these accounts we add that Milton was per- 
 haps, as he is described to be, rather " a harsh and cho- 
 leric man," there may be little difficulty in explaining 
 the conduct of his wife. 
 
 Milton was not a man to sit down tamely under an 
 insult of this nature. He set himself forthwith to con- 
 sider the questions of marriage and divorce in all their 
 bearings, and he arrived at the conclusion that there 
 were other cases, beside the admitted ones, in which the 
 nuptial tie might be dissolved. In the year 1644 he 
 gave to the world his views on the subject, in a treatise 
 addressed to the Parliament, and entitled The Doctrine 
 and Discipline of Divorce ; at first anonymously ; but 
 to a second edition in the same year he prefixed his 
 name. Having, a little time after the publication of this 
 treatise, discovered that the celebrated Martin Bucer had, 
 in a work addressed to the young King Edward VI., 
 treated of the subject of divorce, and arrived at the same 
 conclusions with himself, he published, under the title 
 of The Judgement of Martin Bucer touching Divorce, a 
 synopsis, or epitome, of that portion of his work, with a 
 preface and postscript. 
 
 Great was the wrath and fury of the Presbyterian 
 clergy, who were now in the ascendant, and were fully 
 as intolerant and as impatient of opposition as the 
 
HIS WORKS ON DIVORCE. 37 
 
 Episcopalians had been. Foul language flowed in abun- 
 dance, but mingled with little argument, for they preferred 
 the simpler confutation of force. By their influence the 
 author was summoned to the bar of the House of Lords, 
 whence however he was honourably dismissed. In a 
 sermon preached before the two Houses of Parliament, 
 on the 13th of August, 1644, Herbert Palmer, B.D., a 
 member of the Assembly of Divines, expressed his indig- 
 nation at their suffering such a work to exist : " A wicked 
 book,*' said he, " is abroad and uncensured, though de- 
 serving to be burnt ; whose author hath been so impu- 
 dent as to set his name to it, and dedicate it to your- 
 selves." Others took the short road of treating it as 
 " an error so gross as to need no other confutation" than 
 the mere mention of it, — a convenient mode of argument 
 in use at all times among those who are determined not 
 to be convinced, reason the reasoner ever so strongly. 
 
 In the following year Milton published on the same 
 subject a treatise named Tetrachordon, in which he ex- 
 amines and expounds the four chief places in Scripture 
 which treat of marriage or nullities of marriage ; and this 
 was followed by Colasterion, a reply to a nameless an- 
 swer to the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Thus 
 ended the controversy, but Milton retained his opinions 
 to the end of his life. 
 
 His efforts to have a change made in the law of mar- 
 riage and divorce were, as might be expected, a complete 
 failure ; though he made some proselytes, on whom the 
 title of Miltonists was bestowed. We are not however 
 to infer that his cause was bad, or his arguments feeble ; 
 he had high authorities on his side, and nothing was 
 brought against him but virulent declamation, pointless 
 ridicule, and the vis inertice of long-established prejudice. 
 
38 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 We shall, when we arrive at the proper place, give a 
 sketch of his opinions on the subject, and the arguments 
 by which he supported them. 
 
 But his whole time was not devoted to this subject. 
 In 1644 he gave to the light, at the request of his friend 
 Mr. Samuel Hartlib, a tractate on Education; and in 
 this year also he addressed to the Parliament his Areo- 
 pagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Print- 
 ing, the noblest and most useful of his prose works. 
 In 1645 he published a volume of poems ; and as it con- 
 tains the sonnets to A virtuous Young Lady and to The 
 Lady Margaret Ley, they had been of course written by 
 this time. In this same year he composed the two son- 
 nets on the ill-success of his efforts in the cause of ma- 
 trimonial liberty, and one to his friend Henry Lawes, 
 on the publishing of his Airs. To this period perhaps 
 we may assign also that to his friend Lawrence, and the 
 first of those to Cyriac Skinner. 
 
 As to Milton's mode of life at this period we have little 
 information. His literary labours and his pupils must 
 have engrossed the far greater portion of his time. He 
 had a select circle of friends whom he used to visit. 
 Among these we find particular mention of Lady Mar- 
 garet Ley, to whom, as we have seen, he addressed one 
 of his sonnets. Still he may have found his domestic 
 life irksome for want of a suitable companion ; so, regard- 
 ing his union with Miss Powell as terminated by her ob- 
 stinate desertion of him, he began to look out for some 
 more suitable person with whom he might renew the 
 nuptial tie. The lady on whom he fixed his choice, and 
 to whom he actually paid his addresses, was the daugh- 
 ter of a Dr. Davis. She was, as we are assured, both 
 beautiful and accomplished, but of the full meaning of 
 
RETURN OF HIS WIFE. 39 
 
 these words we have no means of judging, as they are 
 in themselves indefinite ; and at the present day we know 
 that in newspaper parlance all brides of the better classes 
 are lovely and accomplished, as it were, by patent. As 
 little can we determine how these addresses were received 
 by Miss Davis and her friends, but we should suppose 
 not very favourably; for however they might be convinced 
 of the soundness of the suitor's views on the subject of 
 divorce, still, as the law then stood, — and there seemed 
 to be httle chance of its being altered, — the issue of 
 such a marriage would be held to be illegitimate. Add 
 to this, that the lady would in all probability have been 
 quite excluded from the society of her own sex — a thing 
 few virtuous women can patiently endure. Accordingly, 
 as PhiUips tells us, she was " averse, as 'tis said, to this 
 motion." 
 
 The experiment however was not to be made. On 
 the 13th of June, 1645, the fatal battle of Naseby was 
 fought, and the Royal afiairs went rapidly to ruin. The 
 Powell family, it is probable, soon saw that it would be 
 their interest to have a friend on the side now trium- 
 phant, and deemed it a matter of prudence to endeavour 
 to effect a reconciliation between Milton and his wife. 
 The lady herself probably had heard of his addresses to 
 Miss Davis, and her jealousy was excited ; for there are 
 women who can do very well without the society of a 
 lover or a husband, but who cannot endure the idea of 
 its being enjoyed by another. Milton's own friends also, 
 it is probable, thought it would be far better and more 
 becoming, that he should be reconciled to his lawful 
 wedded wife, than engaged in a union with another 
 which the law would not recognize. Accordingly when 
 one day he was paying a visit at the house of one of his 
 
40 , LIFE or MILTON. 
 
 relations, named Blackborough, in the lane of St. Mar- 
 tin' s-le- Grand, his wife, who had been stationed for the 
 purpose in an inner room, came forth, and throwing her- 
 self on her knees before him, implored his forgiveness. 
 At first, calling to mind her heartless and insulting aban- 
 donment of him, he refused to grant it; but finally, 
 moved probably by her tears, — for though we are not 
 told so, as a woman she must have called them to her 
 aid,* — and by the recollection of former love and en- 
 dearments, and by the entreaties and remonstrances of 
 mutual friends, his heart at length relented, and he took 
 her once more to his bosom. f His forgiveness, we have 
 no doubt, was complete and absolute, as suited his noble 
 nature ; but that, to use the language of our friend the 
 Rev. Mr. Mitford, " his marriage, though clouded over in 
 its rise, and portending storms and sorrows, ended in the 
 smiles of renewed affection, in conjugal endearments, and 
 continued love," we are rather inclined to doubt. Mrs. 
 Milton could not change her natural disposition, and 
 that, we know, was not by any means adapted to that of 
 her husband ; and from some passages of his subsequent 
 poetry we might be led to infer, that his married state 
 was very far from being one of unalloyed felicity. J 
 
 Milton, who seems to have been fond of changing his 
 residences, or who perhaps found his present house too 
 small for the augmented number of his pupils, § had just 
 
 * E-ichardson tells us she did shed tears ; and Wood, that she pleaded 
 *' that her mother had been the chief promoter of her forwardness." 
 
 t There can be hardly a doubt that, as has often been observed, he 
 had this scene in his mind when composing Paradise Lost, x. 937, seq^. 
 
 X See Note E. at the end of this Part. 
 
 § Wood says, " that after the publication of his work on Education, 
 the Earl of Barrymore was sent to him by his aunt Lady Eanelagh, 
 and he also had Sir Thomas Gardiner, of Essex." Lady Eanelagh also 
 placed her own son Eichard Jones under him. Four of his Latin 
 
HIS wife's family. 41 
 
 at this time taken a house in Barbican ; and as this was 
 not yet ready, instead of taking his wife home to her 
 former abode, he placed her for the present in the house 
 of a friend.* 
 
 Among the documents in the State-Paper Office is a 
 Protection, signed T. Fairfax, and bearing date the 27th 
 of June, 1646, granted to Mr. R. Powell, of Forest HiU, 
 "who was in the city and garrison of Oxford at the 
 surrender thereof," empowering him " without let or in- 
 terruption to pass the guards, with his servants, horses, 
 arms, goods, and all other necessaries ; and to repair 
 unto London or elsewhere upon his necessary occasions ; 
 .... and to have fuU liberty at any time within six 
 months, to go to any port, and to transport himself, with 
 his servants, goods, and necessaries, beyond seas." The 
 use Mr. Powell made of this protection was to remove, 
 with his wife and his large family of children, to Lon- 
 don, where they were all received into the house of his 
 generous son-in-law. It was probably soon after their 
 arrival that Milton's first child, a daughter named Anne, 
 was born, on the 29th of July. His wife's family ap- 
 pear to have remained with him for some months, for 
 her father died at his house, in or about the following 
 New- Year's Day ;t soon after which probably his widow 
 and children, their affairs being settled in some mea- 
 sure, may have returned to Forest Hill. After their de- 
 parture, the house, says Phillips, "looked again like a 
 house of the Muses." 
 
 letters are addressed to this young man. Phillips tells us that " the 
 accession of scholars was not great." 
 
 * This, PhiUips informs us, was " the Widow Webber's house, iu 
 St. Clement's Churchyard, whose second daughter had been married to 
 the other brother many years before." 
 
 t See Note F. at the end of this Part. 
 
42 LIFE OE MILTON. 
 
 In the beginning of the following year, January 23, 
 1646-7, Milton wrote his last Latin poem, the irre- 
 gular ode sent to John Rouse, the Keeper of the Bod- 
 leian Library at Oxford, in a copy of his poems. It was 
 in the course of this year also that his venerable father 
 paid the debt of nature. Toward the end of the year,* 
 Milton, — as the number of his family, and probably also 
 that of his pupils, was reduced, — finding his house in 
 Barbican to be larger than he required, left it and went 
 to reside in a smaller house in Holborn, which opened 
 backwards into Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here his second 
 child, also a daughter, and named Mary after her mo- 
 ther, was born, on the 25th of October, 1648. 
 
 Phillips says, " he is much mistaken, if there was not 
 about this time a design of making him an adjutant- 
 general in Sir William Waller's army. But the new- 
 modeling of the army proved an obstruction to the de- 
 sign." Of the correctness of this statement some of the 
 biographers doubt, because Waller was a Presbyterian ; 
 and as Milton had broken with that party, he could not 
 serve under him with honour. There is however a much 
 simpler answer. Waller had not and could not have 
 any command at the time ; for the New Model and the 
 Self-denying Ordinance had taken place early in 1645 ; 
 so that if any such offer was made to Milton, which is 
 not very likely, it must have been before that year. 
 
 Milton seems to have been now employed on his His- 
 tory of England, as the four first books of it were writ- 
 ten before the year 1649. His only effort in poetry was 
 a version of nine of the Psalms, executed in 1648. 
 
 When the Independent and military faction had 
 
 * Phillips says, " not long after the march of Fairfax and Cromwell 
 through the City," which was on the 7th of August, 1647. 
 
APPOINTED SECRETARY. 43 
 
 brought their King to trial and to the scaffold, the Pres- 
 byterians raised a great outcry at the deed. Milton, 
 who bore them a private grudge, and who was in ge- 
 neral disgusted with their hypocrisy and tyranny, pub- 
 lished in the month after the death of the King a piece 
 named The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in which 
 he undertook to prove that subjects have a right in cer- 
 tain cases to depose, and even put to death, a tyrant 
 or wicked king ; and then to show, that it was they who 
 deposed and, in effect, put the King to death. He also 
 published at this time. Observations on the Articles of 
 Peace which the Earl of Ormond had lately concluded 
 in the King's name with the Irish Catholics. 
 
 Royalty having been aboHshed, England was now to 
 form a Commonwealth, presided over by a Council of 
 State. As the republics of ancient Greece and Italy 
 were the great objects of admiration to all Anti-Royalists 
 at this time, it was deemed that the Commonwealth of 
 England, which trod in their footprints, ought to use their 
 language in its intercourse with foreign States ; and as 
 Greek, from its difficulty and other obvious causes, was 
 out of the question, the Council of State fixed on the 
 Latin, then in general use among men of learning in 
 their personal intercourse and correspondence. The of- 
 fice of Secretary for Foreign Tongues, as it was termed, 
 was offered to Milton without any solicitation, or even 
 knowledge, on his part. His two late seasonable pieces 
 had probably drawn attention to him ; he was known to 
 be a distinguished scholar, acquainted with both ancient 
 and modern languages ; and finally, Bradshaw, the Presi- 
 dent of the Council, was his kinsman or connection. The 
 offer, as appears from the Book of Orders, of the Council 
 of State, was made to him on the 13th of March or the 
 
44 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 day following ; and he seems not to have hesitated about 
 accepting it, as the 15th is the date of his appointment. 
 From the Book of Orders we may infer that his place 
 was no sinecure, and that he was kept pretty well occu- 
 pied. A portion of his occupation this year, in the ser- 
 vice of the Parliament, was to write a reply to the work 
 named Ikon Basilike, which, passing under the name 
 of the late King, was going through numerous editions, 
 and rendering great service to the Royal cause. His re- 
 ply was named Iconoclastes, or Image-breaker. 
 
 There is no doubt whatever that that daring act of 
 folly, as we may perhaps term it, of the English Parlia- 
 ment, the execution of their King, had aroused through- 
 out Europe a strong feeling of horror and indignation. 
 Excited probably more by this feeling than by the al- 
 leged gift of one hundred gold Jacobuses from the son 
 of that unhappy monarch, Claude de Saumaise, or, as he 
 Latinized his name, Salmasius, one of the most distin- 
 guished scholars in Europe, published at the close of this 
 year a piece named Defensio Regia pro Carolo Primo 
 ad Carolum Secundum, in which he boldly and openly 
 asserted the divine right of kings, and their accountability 
 to God alone for their actions. As the name of the author, 
 independently of the merits of the subject and the exe- 
 cution, was sure to draw much attention to the work, 
 and so might prejudice the cause of the Parliament, the 
 Council, on the 8th of January, 1649-50, made an Or- 
 der that " Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to 
 the book of Salmasius ;" and we find another Order of 
 the 23rd of the following December, " that Mr. Milton 
 do print the treatise which he hath written," etc. 
 
 This was his celebrated, his noble Defensio pro Po- 
 pulo Anglicano ; in which, though he certainly goes much 
 
DEFENSIO PRO POPULO. 45 
 
 further than any one of sound sense and judgement will 
 agree to accompany him, in justifying the late act of 
 the dominant party, every true friend of man must ad- 
 mire the clear and vigorous manner in which he asserts 
 and proves that the people are the true source of power, 
 and that to them the holders of it are accountable for its 
 exercise. The impression made by this treatise was great ; 
 the general feeling on the Continent had been adverse to 
 the Parliament, and the name of their advocate was little 
 known ; but, perhaps in some measure owing to the 
 reputation of Salmasius, it speedily found readers, and 
 consequently admirers. Milton himself tells us, that soon 
 after its publication he received the congratulations of all 
 the Foreign Ministers in London, who, with two or three 
 exceptions, must have been those of crowned heads. 
 
 It must be recorded to Milton's honour, that though 
 his sight had been decaying for some years, and his phy- 
 sicians assured him that if he undertook this work he 
 would become totally blind, he nobly resolved to sacri- 
 fice what may be regarded as the greatest of earthly 
 blessings, to what he deemed a sacred duty. He wrote 
 the Defence, and the prediction of the physicians was 
 verified. 
 
 In the course of this year appeared a reply to the 
 Defence, which Milton erroneously ascribed to Bishop 
 Bramhall, but whose real author was a clergyman of the 
 name of Rowland. To this an answer, also in Latin, 
 was made by Milton's younger nephew John Phillips, 
 now only in his twentieth year, but which was so care- 
 fully revised and corrected by Milton before it wxnt to 
 press, that it may in effect be regarded as his own work. 
 There were some other answers attempted to the De- 
 fence, but of these its author took no notice. A truce 
 
46 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 now prevailed for a short time, after which he returned 
 to the field against a new adversary. 
 
 In an Order of Council, dated November 12, 1649, it 
 is " ordered that Sir John Hippesley be spoken to that 
 Mr. Milton may be accommodated with those lodgings 
 that he hath at Whitehall ;" and on the 19th it is ordered 
 that Milton shall be put in possession of them. By a 
 warrant, dated June 18, 1650, the trustees and contrac- 
 tors for the sale of the late King's goods are directed 
 " to deliver to Mr. John Milton, or to whom he shall ap- 
 point, such hangings as shall be sufficient for the furnish- 
 ing of his lodgings at Whitehall." We afterwards meet 
 another Order, dated April 10, 1651, in which Mr. Vaux 
 is directed " to forbear the removing of Mr. Milton out 
 of his lodgings in Whitehall until Sir Henry Mildmay 
 and Sir Gilbert Pickering shall have spoken with the 
 committee concerning that business." On the 11th of 
 June it was ordered that a committee should go "to the 
 Committee of Parliament for Whitehall to acquaint them 
 with the case of Mr. Milton, in regard of their positive 
 order for his speedy remove out of his lodgings in White- 
 hall ; and to endeavour with them that the said Mr. Mil- 
 ton may be continued where he is, in regard of the em- 
 ployment which he is in to the Council, which necessi- 
 tates him to reside near the Council." 
 
 It thus appears that Milton had apartments given to 
 him by the Parliament when appointed to his office; and 
 as we are told that before he went to them he lodged at 
 one Thomson's, next door to the Bull-head Tavern, Cha- 
 ring Cross, opening into the Spring Garden,* we may 
 
 * Phillips. He is mistaken in saying that it was at Thomson's he 
 wrote his Defensio ; for he must have quitted his house in Novem- 
 ber, and it was not till the following January that he was directed to 
 write it. 
 
THANKS AWARDED HIM. 47 
 
 infer that he was required to move before his official resi- 
 dence, which was in Scotland-yard, was ready. Why he 
 was deprived, as he seems to have been, of these apart- 
 ments, we are not informed. Phillips would seem to 
 have been ignorant of this fact, for he says : " From his 
 apartments in Scotland-yard, whether Milton thought it 
 not healthy or otherwise convenient for his uses, or what- 
 ever else was the reason, he soon after took a pretty gar- 
 den-house in Petty France, in Westminster, next door to 
 the Lord Scudamore's, opening into St. James's Park." 
 In this last residence, we may observe, he remained till 
 the Restoration. It may also be noted, that while he 
 was living in Scotland-yard, and engaged on his De- 
 fence, his wife was delivered, on the 6th of March, 1650, 
 of a son, who died soon after his birth. 
 
 It has been asserted that Milton received £1000 from 
 the Government for his Defence. Of this there is no 
 proof, neither is it very likely, as the Council, which was 
 by no means noted for liberality, probably looked upon 
 it merely as a part of the duties of his office ; in fact, he 
 himself denies it.* They however gave him what cost 
 them nothing — their thanks. In the Council Book may 
 be seen as follows : " 1 6 5 1 . June 1 8 . Ordered that thanks 
 be given to Mr. Milton, on the behalfe of the Common- 
 wealth, for his good services done in writing an answer 
 to the booke of Salmasius, written against the proceed- 
 ings of the Commonwealth of England." This however 
 is cancelled, as well as three lines following, in which a 
 grant of money is made to him ; and then comes a re- 
 gular uncancelled entry in these words : " The Councell 
 takeing notice of the manie good services performed by 
 
 * " Tuque scito illas ojpimitates atque opes, quas mihi exprobras, non 
 attigisse, neque eo nomine, quo maxime accusas, oholo factum ditiorem." 
 —Bef, Sec. 
 
48 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 Mr. John Milton, their Secretarie for Forreigne Languages, 
 to this State and Commonwealth, particularlie for his 
 booke in vindication of the Parliament and people of 
 England against the calumnies and invectives of Salma- 
 sius, have thought fit to declare their resentment and 
 good acceptance of the same, and that the thanks of the 
 Councell bee returned to Mr. Mylton, and their sense 
 represented in that behalfe."* 
 
 We find nothing more of any importance respecting 
 Milton till the 2nd of May, 1652, when his wife lay-in 
 of her fourth child, a daughter, named Deborah, at his 
 house in Petty Prance. Mr. Godwin f asserts, without 
 any authority, that it was on this occasion that he be- 
 came a widower; but as Milton registered the birth of 
 his daughter with his own hand,| it is probable that if 
 
 * It would seem, from tlie difference of the orthography and the 
 more ambitious style, that the change of mind in the Council had been 
 effected by some person or persons who was not present when tlie fit of 
 liberality was on them. A report may hence have been spread that 
 Milton got a solid reward for his work. The word resentment is used 
 in the French sense. 
 
 t Lives of Edward and John Phillips. Mr. Hunter (Milton, p. 34) 
 makes a similar assertion. He supposes Mrs. Milton to have been 
 about thirty years of age at the time. 
 
 X Dr. Birch transcribed the following account of the births of Mil- 
 ton's children, " thus registered," says he, " by himself in the blank 
 leaf of his wife's Bible:" — 
 
 " Anne, my daughter, was bom July the 29th, the day of the monthly 
 fast, between six and seven, or about half an hour after six in the even- 
 ing, 1646. Mary, my daughter, was born on Wednesday, October the 
 25th, on the fast-day, in the morning, about six of the clock, 1648. 
 My son John was born on Saturday, March the 16th, about half an hour 
 past nine at night, 1650. My daughter Deborah was born the 2nd of 
 May, being Sunday, somewhat before three or four of the clock in the 
 morning, 1652." 
 
 It is strange that this curious document is unnoticed by the biogra- 
 phers subsequent to Birch ; Symmons took dates from it without giving 
 his authority. 
 
DEFENSIO SECUNDA. 49 
 
 it had been followed by the death of his wife, he would 
 have noticed that event also. On the other hand how- 
 ever, it may be objected that he has not noted the death 
 of his infant son. The matter therefore must remain in 
 obscurity. 
 
 Some time in this year (1652) there was published a 
 work named Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Caelum, etc., 
 full of the most virulent invective against the English 
 nation, and of the foulest calumnies of Milton personally. 
 Its author was Peter Du Moulin, a Frenchman by birth, 
 but settled in England. Being afraid to publish it in 
 his own name, he transmitted his manuscript to Salma- 
 sius, who committed the charge of putting it through 
 the press to a man of some literary eminence named 
 Moore, or Latinized Morus, of Scottish origin, and then 
 Principal of the Protestant College of Castres, in Lan- 
 guedoc. The work did not bear Morus' name any more 
 than Du Moulin's. He only wrote a dedication to the 
 exiled King, in the name of Adrian Ulac, the printer. 
 Milton however heard of Morus' connection with the 
 work, and he naturally supposed him to be the author. 
 In his Defensio Secunda, which did not appear till 
 1654, he lashes him in a merciless manner, on account 
 of the failings of his private character. At the same 
 time he enters into a noble defence of his own, which had 
 been assailed with such virulence ; and in his vindication 
 of that of his country, he makes a splendid panegyric of 
 some of the most distinguished servants of the Parlia- 
 ment. Morus attempted a reply in his Fides Pubhca, 
 which was answered by Milton in his Author's Pro se 
 Defensio, in 1655. To this Morus rejoined in a Sup- 
 plementum, and a Responsio from Milton terminated 
 the controversy. 
 
50 ' LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 In the year 1652, or the folio whig year, two huportant 
 events occurred in the life of Milton, — the death of his 
 wife, and the total loss of his sight. As to the former, 
 if the supposition above-mentioned be incorrect, Mrs. 
 Milton, who probably nursed Deborah, as she may be 
 presumed to have nursed all her children, did not pro- 
 bably lie-in again till the end of 1653, or the early part 
 of 1654, at which time she lost her life in giving birth 
 to a fifth child ; and Milton thus was deprived of a help- 
 mate, ill-suited to him no doubt, but one who probably 
 had managed his household concerns well, and who was 
 therefore no small loss to him, now that he was bereaved 
 of vision. 
 
 The date of his total blindness is also uncertain. We 
 have seen that in May, 1652, he was able to write ; and 
 if, as seems to be the case, the letter written by him to 
 Bradshaw in favour of Andrew Marvell, dated February 
 the 21st, 1652-3, be in his own handwriting, he could 
 not have been totally blind in the early part of 1653. 
 His biographers however with tolerable unanimity assert 
 that his sight was wholly gone in 1652, because Du 
 Moulin in his work published that year upbraids him 
 with his blindness, and that, in a letter from the Hague, 
 dated 20th June, 1653, in Thurloe's State Papers, he is 
 spoken of as " un aveu(jle nomme Milton." This last 
 authority however goes for nothing, as he may have been 
 blind at the time it was written ; and as to the former, we 
 may observe that a charge of blindness does not imply 
 a total want of vision, for even short-sighted people are 
 sometimes termed blind. 
 
 In a letter dated September 28, 1654, and addressed 
 to Leonard Philares, a learned Athenian, envoy from the 
 Duke of Parma at the Court of France, — who had re- 
 
HIS BLINDNESS. 51 
 
 quested a statement of his case, that he might lay it be- 
 fore Thevenot, who was then in great repute for his treat- 
 ment of diseases of the eye, — Milton says that, about ten 
 years before, he had felt his sight beginning to decay, 
 while at the same time he was troubled with flatulence 
 and indigestion, and whenever he looked at a candle he 
 saw an iris about it. Soon after, the left side of his left 
 eye, the one first affected, became so clouded that he 
 could discern nothing at that side ; and when he closed 
 his right eye, objects appeared to him with their magni- 
 tude reduced. His right eye also had been declining 
 for three years before he became quite blind, and during 
 the latter months of that period objects used to swim 
 before him, and he felt, especially after his meals, a sense 
 of oppression and drowsiness, and when he retired to 
 bed and closed his eyes, a copious light used to flash in 
 them, followed by vivid colours ; but all this ceased as 
 soon as his sight was entirely gone. It is quite plain 
 then that his disease was the paralysis of the optic nerve, 
 named ^utta serena, from an erroneous idea of its cause. 
 
 We now have Milton in the year 1654 totally blind, 
 with three little girls, the eldest not eight, the youngest 
 not two years old, while his time was in a great measure 
 engrossed by his public avocations. It is strange that 
 it never seems to have entered into the mind of his ne- 
 phew to inform us, or of his biographers to inquire, how 
 he managed his domestic concerns under these circum- 
 stances. The most natural supposition would be, that 
 he got some respectable matron to take the charge of his 
 family ; but we fear that the truth is that he did not act 
 so prudently, but, to the manifest injury of his daughters, 
 d d as well as he could with ordinary servants. 
 
 He probably soon grew weary of this unpleasant mode 
 
 E 2 
 
52 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 of life, and perhaps was anxious to give his daughters 
 the advantage of a mother's care; for on the 12th of 
 November, 1656, he entered a second time into the 
 bands of matrimony. His wife's name was Catherine, 
 daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney. The mar- 
 riage was performed according to the civil service then 
 in use, "by Sir John Dethicke, knight and alderman, 
 by the then Act of Parliament, after the publications of 
 their agreement and intention on three market-days."* 
 It is possible that on this occasion also Milton, like his 
 Samson, married out of his own tribe ; for among those 
 arrested for a Royalist conspiracy against Cromwell in 
 1658, we find the name of Captain Woodcock. He may 
 however have been a different person from Milton's fa- 
 ther-in-law, and we doubt if a Royalist or a Presbyterianf 
 would have been content with a merely civil marriage. 
 With his new wife however Milton seems to have en- 
 joyed connubial bliss ; but his enjoyment was of brief 
 duration, for only fifteen months after her marriage, she 
 also died in childbed of a daughter, who did not survive 
 her. This melancholy event occurred in the beginning 
 of February, 1657-8. A beautifid sonnet by her hus- 
 band embalms her memory, and ever, we are confident, 
 will preserve it from decay ; for even the tasteless John- 
 son, though grudgingly, gives it praise. 
 
 We may here pause and inquire a little into Milton's 
 office of Foreign Secretary. We have seen that he was 
 appointed to it early in 1649, and that toward the end 
 of that year he was assigned apartments at Whitehall, 
 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, 1840, June, p. 598, quoted by Todd. 
 
 t " Tlie only Captain Woodcock of tlie Civil War times, with whose 
 name I am acquainted, is a Captain John Woodcock, who, on October 
 6, 1653, gives a receipt to the Treasurer-at-War on the disbanding of 
 his troop." — Hunter, Milton, p. 35. 
 
HIS SALARY AS SECRETARY. 53 
 
 which were afterwards taken from him without any rea- 
 son being given. The amount of his salary is nowhere 
 expressly mentioned. It is only said in the Order of 
 Council " that he have the same salarie which Mr. Wech- 
 erlyn formerly had for the same service," but what that 
 salary was is not specified. We shall see however pre- 
 sently that Milton's salary was nearly £300 a year. Like 
 Blake and other sincere friends of their country, he ac- 
 quiesced in, or rather approved of, Cromwell's assump- 
 tion of the sole authority in the State ; and he was by 
 him continued in office. In an Order in Council, dated 
 April 17, 1655, for the reduction of salaries, it is di- 
 rected " that the former yearly salary of Mr. John Milton 
 of £288, etc.* . . . be reduced to £150 per annum, and 
 paid to him during Ids life out of his Highness' Ex- 
 chequer." As among the warrants which his Highness 
 is in this Order advised to issue for the payment of sa- 
 laries there is one " for the fee of Mr. Philip Meadows, 
 Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate of £200 
 per annum," it has been inferred that Milton's was a re- 
 tiring pension, and that Meadows had taken the place at 
 a reduced salary. But this cannot be the case, for the 
 payment to Meadows is for past services. f It would 
 seem therefore to be the fact that Meadows had been 
 for some time joint secretary with Milton, and that the 
 
 * In an Order of Feb. 13, 1653-4, signed Olivee P., there is " Mr. 
 John Milton for halfe a yeare, from 4th July to the first of Jan. last in- 
 clusive, at \hs. \^\d. per diem, £144. 9*. 3c?." 
 
 t Meadows had been for some time in employment, for we find among 
 the Orders of Council, " 1653. Oct. 17. Ordered that Mr. Philip Mea- 
 dows, now employed by the Councell in Latin translations, doe alsoe 
 assist Mr. Thurloe in the dispatch of the Forreigne businesse ; and that 
 he have in consideration thereof one himdred pounds per annum, to be 
 added to the one hundred pounds per annum he now receives of the 
 Councell." 
 
54 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 latter was now relieved from the ordinary business of 
 the office, and was only to be required to give his aid 
 when papers of importance were to be written. It is 
 certain that he continued to write State-papers up, to the 
 year of the Restoration. 
 
 It would seem however that this reduction of his salary 
 did not take place to the extent proposed ; for on the 
 25th of October, 1659, there is an Order for the pay- 
 ment of John Milton and Andrew Marvell at the rate of 
 £200 a year each. Marvell had then succeeded Mea- 
 dows, and probably through Milton's influence ; for there 
 is a letter from him to Bradshaw so far back as Peb. 21, 
 1652-3, in which he recommended him for the situation. 
 ** If," says he, " upon the death of Mr. Wakerley [Wech- 
 erlyn] the Council shall think that I shall need any as- 
 sistant in the performance of my place, — though for my 
 part I find no encumbrances of that which belongs to 
 me except it be in point of attendance at conferences 
 with ambassadors, which I must confess, in my condition, 
 I am not fit for, — it would be hard for them to find a 
 man so fit every way for that purpose as this gentleman." 
 It therefore appears that Wecherlyn did not go out of 
 office, but remained as assistant to Milton ;* and that on 
 his death the Council, or rather Cromwell, who then had 
 the supreme power, appointed Meadows to the vacant 
 situation. 
 
 There is no doubt but that the arrangement effected 
 in 1655 left Milton more time at his own disposal. He 
 appears to have devoted it partly to his History of Eng- 
 land, partly to the making collections for a copious Latin 
 
 * " 1652. April 7. Ordered that the answer to the King of Den- 
 mark, now read, bee approved of, and translated into Latine by Mr. 
 Wecherlyn." 
 
LITERARY OCCUPATIONS. 55 
 
 dictionary, and for framing a Body of Divinity out of 
 the Bible, and finally to the composing of the great poem, 
 on the subject of which he had fixed at last after long 
 hesitation.* These however did not occupy him wholly. 
 In 1658 he published a manuscript of Sir Walter Ra- 
 leigh's, named The Cabinet Council ; and in the follow- 
 ing year he printed a Treatise of Civil Power in Ec- 
 clesiastical Causes; and another. Considerations touch- 
 ing the Means of removing Hirelings out of the Church. 
 He wrote also, but did not publish, A Letter to a Friend 
 concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, and 
 The present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free 
 Commonwealth, in a letter addressed to General Monk.f 
 In 1660, when the Restoration seemed almost inevit- 
 able, he made a final effort against monarchy, in a piece 
 also addressed to Monk, entitled The ready and easy 
 Way to establish a Free Commonwealth. But all was in 
 vain. The nation was weary of turmoil, and anxious to 
 return to its former condition. The Royalists, seeing the 
 state of the public mind, took courage, and the pulpit was 
 once more converted into a political engine. Dr. Mat- 
 thew Griffith, one of the late King's chaplains, published 
 one of these political sermons which he had preached at 
 Mercers' Hall ; and Milton forthwith sent to the press 
 a reply to it, named Brief Notes upon a late Sermon 
 titled The Fear of God and the King. With this piece 
 terminated his career of political controversy. 
 
 During the eight years that Milton lived in his house 
 in Petty France he had enjoyed the society of some select 
 friends, — such as Lawrence, Skinner, Marvell, — men of 
 
 * Aubrey says he began it two years before the coming-in of the 
 King. 
 
 t They were both printed for the first time by Toland. 
 
56 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 virtue, talent, and learning. With men of power and 
 political influence he appears to have had little inti- 
 macy.* In his Second Defence he terms Col. Overton 
 his friend, and he speaks of Whitlock, Pickering, Strick- 
 land, Sydenham, Sydney, Montague, and Lawrence, as 
 known to him by friendship or by fame, which shows 
 that he was intimate with some of them. With Lady 
 Ranelagh, the mother and aunt of two of his former 
 pupils, and sister to Lord Orrery and the celebrated 
 Robert Boyle, he was on terms of close intimacy. He 
 was also visited by distinguished foreigners, many of 
 whom, Aubrey says, came to England for no other pur- 
 pose but to see Cromwell and Milton. " He was 
 mightily," he says, " importuned to go into Prance and 
 Italy ; foreigners came much to see him, and much ad- 
 mired him ; and offered him great preferments to come 
 over to them." How far this account is correct we are 
 unable to say, but certainly the fame of Milton was 
 widely divulged all over Europe. 
 
 * In his letter to Heimbach, Dec. 18, 1657, he tells him that he can- 
 not be of any service to him, " propter paucissimas famiharitates meas 
 cum gratiosis," 
 
57 
 
 FOURTH PERIOD. 
 
 APTEE THE EESTOEATION. 
 
 A. D. 1660-1674. A. ^T. 52-66. 
 
 As it would not have been safe for the author of Icono- 
 clastes and The Defence of the People of England to 
 have appeared in public after the return of the King, 
 Milton quitted his house in Petty France, and sought an 
 asylum with a friend who lived in Bartholomew Close, 
 near West Smithfield. His concealment here was com- 
 plete ; perhaps, though a proclamation was issued for 
 his apprehension, no very diligent search was made after 
 him. There were among the Royalists men of humanity 
 who could feel compassion for him who was deprived of 
 Nature's prime blessing, and men of taste who were ca- 
 pable of admiration for exalted genius. The names of 
 Monk's cousin, Secretary Morrice, and his brother-in- 
 law. Sir Thomas Clarges, are mentioned as of those who 
 interested themselves in Milton's favour ; Andrew Mar- 
 veil too, who had a seat in Parliament, is said to have 
 exerted himself in behalf of his friend.* But the chief 
 merit is usually assigned to Sir William Davenant, who, 
 when he had been taken prisoner on his passage from 
 France to America, in 1651, was ordered by the Parlia- 
 
 * See PhiUips. 
 
58 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 ment to be tried for his life by the High Court of Jus- 
 tice, and the interest of Milton was then exerted to save 
 him ; he now, it is said, paid the debt of gratitude.* 
 Perhaps after all it was Monk himself, who we know 
 had wished to have only four persons excepted from in- 
 demnity, that caused Milton's name not to appear among 
 the exceptions. 
 
 Warton, who we need not say was no lover of Milton, 
 tells us, on the authority of Thyer, who he says had it 
 from good authority, that " when he was under persecu- 
 cution with John Goodwin, his friends, to gain time, 
 made a mock-funeral for him, and that when matters 
 were settled in his favour, and the affair was known, the 
 King laughed heartily at the trick." This account, im- 
 probable as it may appear, receives some confirmation 
 from the fact that it is to be found in a work written 
 long before the time of Thyer or Warton, f and with 
 which neither of them can be supposed to have been ac- 
 quainted. The story after all is by no means incredible, 
 for Milton's friends might — ^but assuredly without his 
 knowledge — have had recourse to such an artifice. 
 
 On the 16th of June, 1660, the Commons resolved 
 that his Majesty should be " humbly moved to call in 
 Milton's two books [Iconoclastes and The Defence] 
 and that of John Goodwin [The Obstructors of Jus- 
 tice], written in justification of the murder of the late 
 King, and order them to be burnt by the common hang- 
 man ; and that the Attorney- General do proceed against 
 them by indictment or otherwise." On the 27th of 
 
 * E-ichardson, from Pope, who said he had it from Betterton the actor, 
 whose patron Davenant had been. Aubrey, in his MS. Life of Dave- 
 nant, as Todd observes, ascribes his safety, without any mention of 
 Milton, to two aldermen of York. 
 
 t Cunningham's History of Great Britain, i. 14. 
 
HIS APPREHENSIONS REMOVED. 59 
 
 August following several copies of these works were 
 committed to the flames. Two days after, the Act of 
 Indemnity was passed, and Milton had nothing more to 
 fear for his life. Yet we find him, for some cause or 
 other, afterwards in the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, 
 for there is an order of the 15th of December for his 
 release, paying his fees; and another of the 17th, on 
 his complaint of excessive fees being demanded, direct- 
 ing that inquiry should be made of what is fit to be 
 given to the Sergeant. For his confinement on this oc- 
 casion no adequate cause has been assigned. Birch con- 
 jectures that it was in consequence of the order given 
 by the Commons for his prosecution ; but there was no 
 such order, it was merely a motion for an address to the 
 King. We are therefore left in uncertainty. We may 
 now however suppose that Milton's mind was at ease, 
 and that he could give his undivided attention to the 
 great work he had in hand. But if we may credit 
 Richardson's informant, this was by no means the case. 
 " He was," he says, " in perpetual terror of being assas- 
 sinated ; though he had escaped the talons of the law, he 
 had made himself enemies in abundance. He was de- 
 jected, he would lie awake at nights," etc. This, he 
 says. Dr. Tancred Robinson had from a relation of Mil- 
 ton's — Mrs. Walker, of the Temple. To us it does not 
 appear to be at all probable. 
 
 Milton now took a house in Holborn, near Red Lion- 
 street, but he did not remain long there, it is said ; and 
 he removed from it to a house in Jewin-street, near 
 Aldersgate-street, but in what year is uncertain. In 
 1661 he published, under the title of Accidence com- 
 menced Grammar, a Latin grammar, which he had pro- 
 bably drawn up while he was engaged in tuition ; for, 
 
60 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 like a truly wise man, he regarded nothing as mean or 
 insignificant that was useful ; and, besides, he seems to 
 have had a sort of predilection for works in which little 
 beyond judgement and the spirit of arrangement could 
 be exhibited. At this time also he pubUshed another of 
 Raleigh's manuscripts, named Aphorisms of State. 
 
 It was during his residence in Jewin-street, that Mil- 
 ton entered for the third and last time into the married 
 state. The name of the lady was Elizabeth, daughter 
 of Mr. Randolph Minshull, of Wistaston, near Nantwich, 
 in Cheshire, who had been recommended to him by his 
 friend Dr. Paget, to whom she was related. The date 
 of his marriage is uncertain. Aubrey says, it was the 
 year before the sickness, which would place it in 1664; 
 and this perhaps is correct. His bride, as will appear in 
 the sequel, was thirty years younger than himself.* 
 
 It may seem strange that Milton, who had remained 
 now for eight years a widower, and whose eldest daugh- 
 ter Anne must have been nearly eighteen years of age, — 
 and therefore, it might be supposed, capable of manag- 
 ing his house, and giving him, with the aid of her sister 
 Mary, now sixteen, the attention which he required in 
 his helpless condition, — should have thought of marrying 
 again. But it appears to have been the conduct of these 
 very daughters that induced him to do so. In the de- 
 positions made on the occasion of his will, we find that 
 he was repeatedly heard to say, that " they had been un- 
 
 * It has been observed, that Milton's wives were all maidens. In 
 the Apology for Smectymnuus, when replying to his adversary, who 
 had said, that " a rich widow, or a lecture, or both, would content him," 
 he says, " I care not, if I tell him thus much professedly, — though it be 
 the losing of my rich hopes, as he calls them, — that I think with them 
 who, both in prudence and elegance of spirit, would chuse a virgin of 
 mean features, honestly bred, before the wealthiest widow." 
 
HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 61 
 
 dutiful and unkind to him ;" and to complain, that " they 
 were careless of him, being blind, and made nothing of 
 deserting him." One witness deposed that " he had de- 
 clared to her, that a little before his marriage a former 
 maid-servant of his told his daughter Mary, that she 
 heard he was to be married ;" to which she replied, that 
 *' that was no news, to hear of his wedding ; but if she 
 could hear of his death, that was something :" and that 
 he also told her, that " they did combine together and 
 counsel his maid-servant to cheat him in her marketings, 
 and that they had made away with some of his books, and 
 would have sold the rest of his books to the dunghill- 
 Avomen." We may observe, that what is here said can 
 apply only to the two elder daughters, for Deborah was 
 not yet twelve years old. It must also be noted that, by 
 their uncle's testimony, they all continued to live in his 
 house for five or six years after his marriage. Of what 
 education he gave them, we shall speak in the sequel. 
 
 Mrs. Milton, — Betty, as he used to call her, — appears 
 at all events to have made him an excellent wife, and to 
 have contributed largely to the comforts of his decHning 
 years, thus justifying the prudence of the hazardous step 
 he had taken in marrying again at this time of hfe. Not 
 long after this marriage, Milton, through Dr. Paget also, 
 became acquainted with a young Quaker, named Thomas 
 Ellwood, who has left some interesting notices of the il- 
 lustrious poet. 
 
 " John Milton," says the naif Friend, " a gentleman 
 of great note for learning throughout the learned world, 
 having filled a public station in former times, lived now 
 a private and retired life in London ; and, having wholly 
 lost his sight, kept always a man to read to him, which 
 usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaint- 
 
62 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 ance, whom in kindness he took to improve in his learning. 
 By the mediation of my friend Isaac Pennington with Dr. 
 Paget, and of Dr. Paget with John Milton, was I ad- 
 mitted to come to him, — not as a servant to him, which 
 at that time he needed not, nor to be in the house with 
 him ; — but only to have the liberty of coming to his 
 house at certain hours when I would, and to read to him 
 what books he should appoint me, which was all the 
 favour I desired. 
 
 "I went therefore and took myself a lodging near 
 to his house, which was then in Jewin-street, as conve- 
 niently as I could ; and from thenceforward went every 
 day in the afternoon, except on the first days of the 
 week, and, sitting by him in his dining-room, read to 
 him such books, in the Latin tongue, as he pleased to 
 hear me read. 
 
 "At my first sitting to read to him, observing that 
 I used the English pronunciation, he told me, 'if I 
 would have the benefit of the Latin tongue, not only to 
 read and to understand Latin authors, but to converse 
 with foreigners either abroad or at home, I must learn 
 the foreign pronunciation.' To this I consenting, he in- 
 structed me how to sound the vowels. This change of 
 pronunciation proved a new difiiculty to me ; but Labor 
 omnia vincit Improbus, and so did I, which made my 
 reading the more acceptable to my master. He, on the 
 other hand, perceiving with what earnest desire I pur- 
 sued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, 
 but all the help he could ; for, having a curious ear, he 
 understood by my tone when I understood what I read, 
 and when I did not, and accordingly would stop me, 
 examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me." 
 
 Milton, it appears, did not remain in Jewin-street 
 
REMOVES TO CHALFONT. 63 
 
 long after his marriage. Perhaps the house did not 
 please his wife. At all events, in the spring of 1665 he 
 was living in a small house in Artillery Walk, leading 
 into Bunhill Fields ; " which," says Phillips, " was his last 
 stage in this world." It would seem most natural, that 
 a man who had his house furnished would of course 
 move at once to his new residence, and transfer thither 
 his furniture. But Richardson tells us, that shortly 
 after his marriage he went to lodge with Millington, the 
 famous book-auctioneer of that time, who hved in Little 
 Britain, and that his host was used to lead him by the 
 hand when walking in the streets. He says he had the 
 account from a person who had often met them. May 
 not however Millington have been only a neighbour or 
 friend, who took pleasure in the society of such a dis- 
 tinguished man ? 
 
 When the Plague broke out, in May, 1665, Milton 
 prudently resolved to quit London, and he employed his 
 friend Ell wood, who was now engaged as tutor in the 
 family of a wealthy Quaker, at Chalfont, in Buckingham- 
 shire, to look out for some place for him in his neigh- 
 bourhood. " I took a pretty box for him," says he, " in 
 Giles Chalfont,* a mile from me, of which I gave him 
 notice, and intended to have waited on him, and seen 
 him well settled in it, but was prevented by imprison- 
 ment," — a thing with which poor honest Ellwood was 
 
 * Warton says, " The house ... is still standing, small, but pleasantly- 
 situated." Dunster says, " The adjacent country is indeed extremely 
 pleasant ; but the immediate spot is as Uttle picturesque or pleasing 
 as can well be imagined. Immediately in front of the house a grass 
 field rises so abruptly as completely to exclude all prospect ; and the 
 common road of the village passes by the gable-end, adjoining to which 
 is the end of a small dwelling, which runs behind that inhabited by 
 Milton." Prospects however are very indifierent to the blind. 
 
64 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 but too familiar, in consequence of the odious persecut- 
 ing spirit which then prevailed. He however was not 
 long detained in Aylesbury gaol, and "being now re- 
 leased," he proceeds, " I soon made a visit to him, to 
 welcome him to the country. After some common dis- 
 courses had passed between us, he called for a manu- 
 script of his, which being brought he delivered to me, 
 bidding me take it home with me, and read it at my 
 leisure ; and when I had so done, return it to him, with 
 my judgement thereupon. 
 
 " When I came home, and set myself to read it, I 
 found it was that excellent poem which he entitled Pa- 
 radise Lost. After I had with the best attention read 
 it through, I made him another visit, and returned him 
 his book, with due acknowledgment of the favour he had 
 done me in communicating it to me. He asked me how 
 I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly 
 and freely told him ; and after some farther discourse 
 about it, I pleasantly said to him, ' Thou hast said much 
 here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Pa- 
 radise found?' He made me no answer, but sat some 
 time in a muse, then broke off the discourse, and fell 
 upon another subject. 
 
 "After the sickness was over, and the city well 
 cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned 
 thither ; and when, afterwards, I went to wait on him 
 there, — which I seldom failed of doing whenever my 
 occasion led me to London, — he showed me his second 
 poem, called Paradise Regained, and in a pleasant tone 
 said to me, ' This is owing to you ; for you put it into 
 my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, 
 which before I had not thought of.' " 
 
 Prom this account we learn, among other interesting 
 
PRINTS PARADISE LOST. 65 
 
 particulars, that in 1665 the Paradise Lost was com- 
 pleted ; and that in that year, at Chalfont, he composed, 
 or at least may have commenced, the Paradise Regained ; 
 and from this we may infer, that his amanuenses were 
 probably his wife and daughters. 
 
 The pestilence ceased by the end of the year, but pro- 
 bably Milton did not return to London till the spring of 
 1666. It, in fact, is not unlikely that he had taken the 
 house at Chalfont for a year from Midsummer. We 
 have no information as to where he was at the time of 
 the Great Pire, which broke out in the following month 
 of September; but Bunhill Pields were beyond its range, 
 and so he could not have sustained any injury from its 
 ravages. His last Latin letter, addressed to a learned 
 German, is dated London, August 15, 1666. 
 
 Milton having now two poems ready for the press, re- 
 solved to proceed to the publication of them, commencing 
 with the Paradise Lost, as first in magnitude and in 
 order of time. When we recollect that nearly the whole 
 city of London was burnt in the end of the autumn of 
 1666, it may surprise us, but at the same time give us 
 a^^forcible idea of the energy of the English character, 
 to find that the agreement for the sale of this poem to 
 Samuel Simmons is dated April 27, 1667; and our 
 wonder would be raised still higher if the conjecture of 
 Hayley were correct, that it had been already printed at 
 the expense of the author. But this is not by any means 
 a probable supposition. 
 
 It is well known that the terms on which this great 
 poem were published were £5 in hand, the same sum 
 on the sale of thirteen hundred copies of the first edi- 
 tion, £5 on the sale of the like number of the second 
 edition, and another £5 after the same sale of the third ; 
 
 p 
 
66 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 ro edition to exceed fifteen hundred copies. So that, 
 on a sale of three thousand five hundred copies, the 
 author was at the utmost only to receive £20 ! This 
 really seems almost incredible. The book, no doubt, was 
 sold at what we may regard as a very moderate price, — 
 a small quarto, neatly bound, for three shillings ; but 
 surely publishing must have been a very poor trade, or 
 Simmons a very dishonest man, which we have no rea- 
 son to suppose, when the profits on three large editions 
 would enable him to give the author, — whose share 
 publishers at the present day usually calculate at half 
 profits, — only the paltry sum above-mentioned. Such 
 however is the fact.* 
 
 This great poem even ran a chance of not being al- 
 lowed to appear in print. Cromwell had magnani- 
 mously adopted the suggestion made on the subject in 
 our author's Areopagitica, and abolished the office of 
 Licenser ; but the bigotry and despotic temper of Cla- 
 rendon, Sheldon, and other advisers of Charles II., had 
 caused it to be restored by Act of Parliament in 1662 
 Its duties were divided among the Judges, some of the 
 Officers of State, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Poetry came under the supervision of the last, and Shel- 
 don's chaplain, the Rev. Thomas Tomkyns, to whom the 
 task of examining the Paradise Lost was deputed, fancied 
 he discerned something very like treason in the simile — 
 
 * After the publication of the third edition in 1678, Mrs. Milton 
 gave Simmons a general release, on the receipt of £8, dated April 29, 
 1681. Simmons transferred his right to Brabazon Aylmer for £25, who 
 sold one half of it August 17, 1683, and the other half, March 24, 1690, 
 to Jacob Tonson, at a great advance of price. — Todd, from Gent's 
 Mag., July, 1822. "We may remark, that Tonson gave Dryden £300 
 for his Fables, which do not contain many more verses than the Pa- 
 radise Lost. 
 
PARADISE REGAINED, AND SAMSON. 67 
 
 " As when the sun, new-risen, 
 Looks through the misty horizontal air," etc. 
 
 However his own good sense or the opinions of others 
 prevailed, and the imprimatur was granted. 
 
 The first edition, of fifteen hundred copies, sold fast 
 enough to entitle the author to his second £5 at the end 
 of two years ; and when we consider the state of the 
 times, the ill-odour which the name of the author must 
 have been in with the greater part of the aristocracy, 
 the clergy, and the classes in general who were the 
 chief purchasers of books, and other circumstances, we 
 cannot regard the sale as a bad one. We should recol- 
 lect the slow sale of the poems of Wordsworth and 
 Southey in our own days. As to the assertion of the 
 poem being above the age in which it appeared, we 
 cannot regard it as correct ; the knowledge of the Scrip- 
 tures, the classics, and the Italian poets, was probably 
 greater at that time than it is at the present day ; and 
 this is the knowledge requisite for understanding the 
 Paradise Lost. What seems most strange to us is, 
 that the remaining two hundred copies should have sup- 
 plied the demand for the following five years, and that 
 Simmons should then have ventured on another impres- 
 sion also of fifteen hundred copies. 
 
 The only work which Milton gave to the press for 
 some years was his History of England, which he 
 brought down to the Norman Invasion, and published 
 in 1670. But he must have been at this time chiefly 
 occupied with his great work, De Doctrina Christiana, 
 which was not destined to see the light till after the 
 lapse of a century and a half. 
 
 In 1671 he published Paradise Regained and Sam- 
 son Agonistes, in a thin octavo volume, handsomely 
 
 F 2 
 
68 ^ LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 printed. If Mr. Tomkyns was the examiner, it seems 
 strange that he should have hcensed the latter poem, 
 which contains much more perilous passages than the 
 simile in Paradise Lost. In 1672 he gave to the press 
 his Artis Logicse plenior Institutio, ad Rami Methodum 
 concinnata, a work which he probably had had lying by 
 him for years; it came to a second edition in the fol- 
 lowing year. In 1673 he published a new edition of his 
 Poems, English and Latin, with some additional pieces, 
 and the tractate on Education, in a duodecimo volume 
 far inferior in typography and in correctness to the 
 original edition of 1645. He also published this year 
 a Treatise of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Tolera- 
 tion, etc. 
 
 In the year 1674, in which he terminated his earthly 
 career, he gave to the world what appear to have been 
 all that was now remaining in his scrinia, his Latin 
 Epistolse Eamiliares, or letters written to his friends at 
 different dates from 1625 to 1666, and his Prolusiones 
 Oratorise, which he had delivered during his residence 
 at Cambridge. He seems in fact to have set a high 
 value on everything he wrote, and therefore carefully to 
 have kept copies of all his compositions. A translation 
 of the Declaration for the Election of John Sobieski as 
 King of Poland, appeared this year, said to have been 
 dictated by Milton. The only English manuscript which 
 he seems to have left was a treatise, named Moscovia, 
 or Account of Muscovy, compiled from the narratives of 
 the various persons who had visited that then semi-bar- 
 barous and little-known country. We have aheady no- 
 ticed Milton's fondness for compilation. 
 
 He had been for some years afflicted with the gout, 
 and in the month of July, conscious that his end could 
 
HIS DEATH. 69 
 
 not be far distant, when his brother — with whom he 
 had always been on most friendly terms, notwithstand- 
 ing their differences in politics and other matters — came 
 to see him previous to going down to his residence in 
 SuflPolk, he declared before him what he wished to be 
 understood as his last will, leaving all his property to 
 his wife. It seems very strange that, with a brother 
 a lawyer, he should not have made a formal will, 
 but have made such a disposition of his property as 
 was not in accordance with the strict requirements of 
 the law, and, as was the result, liable in consequence to 
 litigation. 
 
 We have little information respecting the remaining 
 few months of this illustrious man's existence. A de- 
 ponent in the suit respecting his will describes him as 
 on a day in the beginning of October, dining alone with 
 his wife in their kitchen, when he, she said, " talked and 
 discoursed sensibly and well, and was very merry, and 
 seemed to be in good health of body." It is pleasing 
 to view him thus, in the enjoyment of some of the bless- 
 ings of life, so near the time of his dissolution ; for on 
 Sunday, the 8th of the following November, he expired 
 so gently and so free from all pain that the moment of 
 his last respiration was unobserved by those who were 
 in the room. On the 12th his remains w^ere conveyed 
 to the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and laid beside 
 those of his father, in the upper part of the church. 
 "The funeral was attended," says Toland, "by all the 
 author's learned and great friends in London, not with- 
 out a friendly concourse of the vulgar." Had he lived 
 another month he would have completed his sixty-sixth 
 year. 
 
 In his person Milton was rather under the middle 
 
70 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 size,* well-built, and muscular. " His deportment," says 
 Wood, " was affable, and his gait erect and manly, be- 
 speaking courage and undauntedness." He was skilled 
 in the use of the small-sword ; and, though he certainly 
 would not have engaged in a duel, he had strength, 
 skill, and courage to repel the attack of any adversary.! 
 His hair, which never fell off, was of a light-brown hue, 
 and he wore it parted on his forehead, as is represented 
 in his portraits. J His eyes were grey, and, as the cause 
 of his blindness was internal, they suffered no change of 
 appearance from it. His face was oval, and his com- 
 plexion was so fine in his youth that at Cambridge he 
 was, as we are told by Aubrey, called the Lady of his 
 College;^ even in his later days his cheeks retained a 
 ruddy tinge. He had a fine ear for music, and was well 
 skilled in that delightful science ; he used to perform on 
 the organ and bass-viol. His voice was sweet and mu- 
 sical, II and we may presume that his singing showed both 
 taste and science. 
 
 Richardson gives the following description of Milton 
 
 * ** He was scarce so tail as I am [Qu. quot feet I am higli ? Resp. 
 of middle stature]." — Aubrey. 
 
 t Def. Sec. 
 
 X See Note Gr. at the end of this Part. 
 
 § We rather think this is a mistake of Aubrey's, founded on the fol- 
 lowing passage in one of the Prolusions, where a different reason seems 
 to be assigned : — 
 
 " A quibusdam nuper audivi Domina. At cur videor illis parum mas- 
 culus ? Ecquis Prisciani pudor ? Itane propria quse maribus foemineo 
 generi tribuunt insulsi grammaticastri ? Scilicet quia scyphos capacis- 
 simos nunquam valui pancratice haurire ; aut quia manus tenenda stiva 
 non occaluit; aut quia nunquam ad meridianum solem supinus jacui 
 septennis bubulcus ; fortasse demum quod nunquam me virum prsestiti 
 eo modo quo illi ganeones." 
 
 II " He had a delicate tunable voice," says Aubrey ; and he adds that 
 "he pronounced the letter E very hard." This last habit he acquired 
 probably out of his fondness for the Italian. 
 
HIS MODE OE LIFE, 71 
 
 in his declining years. " An ancient clergyman of Dor- 
 setshire, 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 cada- 
 verous ; his hands and feet gouty and with chalk-stones. 
 . . . He used also to sit in a grey coarse cloth coat, 
 at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm 
 sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air ; and so, as well as 
 in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished 
 parts as well as quality." 
 
 In his mode of living, Milton, as might be anticipated, 
 was moderate and temperate. At his meals he never 
 took much of wine or any other fermented liquor, and 
 he was not fastidious in his food ; yet his taste seems to 
 have been delicate and refined like his other senses, and 
 he had a preference for such viands as were of an agree- 
 able flavour. In his early years he used to sit up late 
 at his studies, and perhaps he continued this practice 
 while his sight was good ; but in his latter years he re- 
 tired every night at nine o'clock, and lay till four in 
 summer, till five in winter, and if not disposed then to 
 rise, he had some one to sit at his bedside and read to 
 him. When he rose he had a chapter of the Hebrew 
 Bible read for him, and then, with of course the inter- 
 vention of breakfast, studied till twelve.* He then 
 dined, took some exercise for an hour, — generally in a 
 chair, in which he used to swing himself, — and after- 
 wards played on the organ or the bass-viol, and either 
 
 * Aubrey says he had a man who read to him and wrote for him. 
 He first read to him when he rose, and then returned at seven o'clock 
 and read and wrote till dinner-time. " The writing was as much as the 
 reading." We are to recollect that his daughters were not with him 
 for the last four or five years of his life. 
 
72 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 sang himself or made his wife sing, who, as he said, had 
 a good voice but no ear. He then resumed his studies 
 till six, from which hour till eight he conversed with 
 those who came to visit him.* He finally took a light 
 supper, smoked a pipe of tobacco, and drank a glass of 
 water, after which he retired to rest. 
 
 Thus calmly, thus gently, quietly, and unostentatiously 
 glided away the closing days in the life of a man who 
 possessed a secret consciousness that he had well per- 
 formed the part assigned him on earth ; had well em- 
 ployed the talents committed to him ; had achieved a 
 name among the most illustrious of the sons of men, 
 which was to last perhaps coevally with the world itself. 
 All these cheering thoughts and anticipations were il- 
 lumed and gilded by the light that beamed on his inward 
 sense from the futui-e world, in which he was to enjoy 
 the fulness of bliss. Surely such a man could not have 
 been unhappy, however narrow his circumstances, how- 
 ever undutiful his children, however disappointed his 
 religious and political aspirations. Nor should be omit- 
 ted in enumerating the blessings bestowed on this illus- 
 trious man, his total exemption at all periods of his life 
 from the miseries of a dependence on and solicitation of 
 courts and ministers and the worldly great,! — miseries 
 
 * " He was visited by the learned," says Aubrey, " muck more than 
 he did desire." Among his visitors was John Dryden : see Preface to 
 State of Innocence and Fables. Aubrey tells us that he asked per- 
 mission to dramatize Paradise Lost in rime, and that Milton replied 
 that he might tag his verses if he liked, Milton, his widow said, looked 
 on Dryden as a mere rimester, and no poet. 
 
 t We must however say that there is something very gratifying to 
 the feelings in the contemplation of the friendship — for it was not mere 
 patronage — which prevailed between Lord Lonsdale and his famQy and 
 the late William Wordsworth. It was alike honourable to both parties; 
 the dignity of genius was acknowledged, and rank and wealth appeared 
 in their proper lustre. 
 
MODE OF COMPOSITION. 73 
 
 described by his great poetic sire, from bitter experience, 
 SO truly, SO vividly, and so feelingly: — 
 
 ** Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, 
 What hell it is in suing long to bide ; 
 To lose good days that might be better spent ; 
 To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; 
 To spend today, to be put back tomorrow ; 
 To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; 
 To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her Peers'; 
 To have thy asking, yet wait many years ; 
 To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; 
 To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs 
 To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run ; 
 To spend, to give, to want, to be undone." 
 
 Mother Huhhard's Tale, 895 seq. 
 
 Like many other poets Milton found the stillness, 
 warmth, and recumbency of bed favourable to composi- 
 tion ; and his wife said that before rising of a morning, 
 he often dictated to her twenty or thirty verses. A fa- 
 vourite position of his when dictating his verses, we are 
 told, was that of sitting with one of his legs over an arm 
 of his chair. His wife related that he used to compose 
 chiefly in the winter, which account is confirmed by the 
 following passage in his Life by Phillips : — " There is a 
 remarkable passage in the composition of Paradise Lost 
 which I have a particular occasion to remember; for, 
 whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, 
 for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, 
 in a parcel of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, 
 which, being written by whatever hand came next, might 
 possibly want correction as to the orthography and point- 
 ing ; having, as the summer came on, not been shown 
 any for a considerable while, and desiring to know the 
 reason thereof, was answered that ' his veins never happily 
 flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and 
 
74 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 that whatever he attempted [at other times] was never to 
 his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so 
 much \ so that in all the years he was about this poem, 
 he maybe said to have spent but half his time therein."* 
 MUton's conversation is stated to have been of a very 
 agreeable nature. His daughter Deborah said that he 
 was " delightful company, the life of the conversation, 
 and that on account of a flow of subject, and an un- 
 affected cheerfulness and civility." Richardson, to whom 
 we are indebted for the preservation of this testimony, 
 adds that " he had a gravity in his temper, not melan- 
 choly, or not till the latter part of his life, not sour, not 
 morose or ill-natured, but a certain severity of mind ; a 
 mind not condescending to little things." His temper 
 however was warm, perhaps somewhat overbearing, as 
 some places of his controversial writings may appear to 
 indicate, and we have the testimony of probably an in- 
 different person that he was looked on as "a harsh and 
 choleric man ;" but all this is perfectly compatible with 
 the highest moral excellence, and with general urbanity 
 and kindness of nature and manner. Thus the meaning 
 of these last words may be that he was one who would 
 not tamely submit to injustice and imposition. Heinsius 
 writing to Gronovius in 1651, says of Milton, "virura 
 esse miti comique ingenio aiunt." His opinion of his 
 own powers was naturally high, and he speaks of his 
 
 * There seems to be some foundation in the poems themselves for 
 this notion. His best Latin poems, such as the Mansus, the Epi- 
 taphium Damonis, etc., must have been composed in the period speci- 
 fied ; so also was the Ode on the Nativity, and Lycidas, and pro- 
 bably Paradise Regained. In fact the only one of his longer poems 
 of which we can assert the contrary is Comus. In his Latin elegy 
 In Adventiim Veris however he would seem to say that it was with 
 the Spring that his poetic powers revived. 
 
HIS WORLDLY CIRCUMSTANCES. 75 
 
 " honest haughtiness and self-esteem," joined however, he 
 adds, with a becoming modesty. 
 
 With respect to the worldly circumstances of this great 
 man, little is known with certainty. It is evident that 
 during his travels, and after his return, the allowance 
 made him by his father was liberal. It was adequate, 
 we may see, to the support of himself and his two ne- 
 phews, for it is not likely that his sister paid him any- 
 thing for them. He must also have considered himself 
 able to support a family, without keeping school, when 
 he married Miss Powell. He of course inherited ths 
 bulk of his father's property, but of the amount of it we 
 are ignorant ; all we know is that it included the interest 
 in his house in Bread-street. His losses were not incon- 
 siderable. A sum of £2000, which he had invested in 
 the Excise Office, was lost at the Restoration, as the Go- 
 vernment refused to recognize the obligations of the 
 Commonwealth ; according to the account of his grand- 
 daughter, he lost another sum of £2000 by placing it 
 in the hands of a money-scrivener ; and he also lost at 
 the Restoration a property of £60 a year out of the lands 
 of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, which he very 
 probably had purchased. His house in Bread-street was 
 destroyed by the Great Fire. The whole property which 
 he left behind him, exclusive of his claim on the Powell 
 family for his first wife's fortune, and of his household 
 goods,* did not exceed £1500, including the produce of 
 his library, a great part of which he is said to have dis- 
 posed of before his death. 
 
 Two charges have been made against the memory of 
 Milton, — the one, that he was unkind and unjust to his 
 children ; the other, that he attended no place of worship, 
 
 * Toland. 
 
76 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 and never appears to have had social prayers in his family. 
 We will consider the former when we come to speak of 
 his daughters ; the latter we will notice in this place. 
 
 It is but too prevalent an opinion that religion consists 
 chiefly in a regular attendance at some place of wor- 
 ship, and at the bottom of this persuasion there seems 
 to be an idea, apparently derived from the language of 
 the Old Testament, that God is more in one place than 
 in another, or that devotions offered in such a place are 
 more acceptable than if offered elsewhere. Hence we 
 may see persons who are so deaf as to be unable to hear 
 any part of the service most regular attendants at church. 
 Such however we know could never have been the belief 
 of Milton, and therefore he may have regarded his blind- 
 ness as a sufficient excuse for not frequenting any place 
 of worship. This and other reasons have been assigned 
 by Toland, Newton, and others ; but the discovery of his 
 work on Christian Doctrine enables us to see more 
 clearly into the grounds of his not joining himself to any 
 religious society. From his opinions as there developed, 
 we may discern that he differed in his theologic views 
 from every sect then in existence. He says, no doubt, 
 quoting the well-known passage Heb. x. 25, that "it is 
 the duty of believers to join themselves, if possible, to a 
 church duly constituted ;" but he did not regard any 
 society of Christians that he knew of as forming "a 
 church duly constituted " in his eyes, and therefore it 
 was not possible for him to join any. He further de- 
 fines the universal Church as consisting of those who 
 worship God through Christ anywhere, and either in- 
 dividually or in conjunction with others; and he adds, 
 that those who cannot do this last " conveniently or 
 with full satisfaction of conscience," are not to be sup- 
 
HIS DEVOTIONS. 77 
 
 posed not to partake of the blessings bestowed on the 
 Church. 
 
 As to his not having social prayer in his family, this 
 we think may be elucidated by the remark he makes 
 respecting our Lord, who, he says, " appears seldom to 
 have prayed in conjunction with his disciples, or even in 
 their presence, but either wholly alone or at some dis- 
 tance from them." This was probably the model which 
 he set before himself, and he may have deemed it suffi- 
 cient to give his family an example of true and rational 
 devotion. He commenced every day with the reading 
 of the Scriptures, and spent some time in silent and 
 serious meditation thereon, saying thus, as it were, to 
 those around him, "Go and do thou likewise." He 
 did not seek apparently to impress his own peculiar 
 views on his family. He must have been married to 
 his last wife according to the rites of the Church of 
 England, and it is very probable that she frequented 
 some place of worship, as she died a member of the 
 Baptist society. To judge by one of the interrogatories 
 put to the witnesses in the case of his will, and probably 
 suggested by the malicious Mary Milton, his daughters 
 were regular in their attendance at church.* 
 
 In what precedes we have endeavoured to arrange and 
 narrate all the circumstances relating to the life, manners, 
 pursuits, and occupations of the ever-illustrious John 
 Milton. Scanty as they may appear to be, they are, in 
 reality, more copious than those which have reached us 
 of any other distinguished man anterior to the 18th 
 century. Thus, what do we know of the lives of Dante, 
 
 * See Note H. at end of this Part. 
 
78 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 of Shakespeare, of Spenser ? Almost nothing. Of Tor- 
 quato Tasso and a few others we know somewhat more, 
 yet still comparatively little. And perhaps — though we 
 are far from asserting it of Milton — it is better for the 
 fame of great writers that their history should be in- 
 volved in a kind of mythic envelope, and that thus, like 
 superior beings, they should be known to the after- world 
 only by the products of their creative genius. We say 
 this, knowing no human being to be exempt from im- 
 perfection, and judging by the effects of some of the 
 copious biographies of modern times. 
 
79 
 
 MILTON'S FAMILY. 
 
 ANNE MILTON. 
 
 The eldest child of John Milton of Bread-street of whom 
 we have any account was a daughter named Anne. 
 Of the date of her birth we are not informed,* but as she 
 had a child before her brother John had completed his 
 seventeenth year, she was probably at least two or three 
 years older than he was \ and we may therefore venture 
 to place her birth in the year 1605 or 1606. Her father 
 gave her in marriage, with a handsome fortune, — pro- 
 bably in the year 1624, — to Mr. Edward Phillips, a 
 native of Shrewsbury; who, having come up young 
 to London, as his son tells us, had obtained in process 
 of time the lucrative office of Secondary in the Crown 
 Office in the Court of Chancery. Of his age at that 
 time we have no information, but he was probably not 
 very young, as he did not survive his marriage many 
 years. Beside the daughter who died soon after her 
 birth, and whose memory has been embalmed by the 
 genius of her youthful uncle, they had two sons, named 
 Edward and John; the former born in 1630, the latter 
 
 * Todd informs us that lier birth is not to be found in the register of 
 Allhallows, and assigns as a reason that she may have been bom before 
 her father settled in Bread-street. See above, p. 3. 
 
80 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 about a year later, of whom we will presently treat more 
 at large; and it is not improbable that in the interval 
 between 1625 and 1630 they lost another child or two. 
 We are completely in the dark also as to the time of the 
 death of Mr. Phillips; but in 1639, when our poet re- 
 turned from his travels, his sister was, and may have 
 been for some time, married to Mr. Agar, a friend of 
 her first husband's, and his successor in the Crown 
 Office. By him she had two daughters, — Mary, who 
 died young, and Anne, who was living in 1694 when 
 her brother Edward was writing the life of his illustrious 
 kinsman. It is from this narrative that we have derived 
 all our information respecting his mother, and here his 
 communications end. Perhaps we might infer from her 
 brother's verses on the death of her child that Mrs. 
 Phillips was an amiable woman. 
 
 CHEISTOPHEE MILTON. 
 
 The only surviving child of John Milton, beside his 
 daughter Anne and his son John, was a son named 
 Christopher, born, as it would appear,* toward the end 
 of November, in the year 1615, and therefore seven 
 years younger than his brother John. His father, who, 
 as we have seen, had destined his elder son for the 
 Church, put his younger to the legal profession, and he 
 became a barrister-at-law. He was, like most of his 
 profession, a Royalist in principle. He established him- 
 self in the town of Reading in Berkshire ; and, proba- 
 bly soon after the departure of his brother John for 
 
 * Todd quotes from the register of Allliallows : — " The third daye 
 of December, 1615, was baptized Cheistophee, the sonne of John 
 Mylton of this pishe, scrivenor." 
 
CHRISTOPHER MILTON. 81 
 
 the Continent, his father, averse to lonehness, went to 
 reside with him. When Reading surrendered in 1643, to 
 the troops of the Parliament, the old gentleman went up 
 to the house of his son John in London, where he spent 
 his few remaining years. Christopher, who it appears 
 was by no means inactive in the Royal cause, went then 
 to Exeter , and was in it when it surrendered, on the 
 13th of April, 1646, on which occasion he was obliged 
 to compound for his delinquency. The following is his 
 composition-paper, preserved in the State Paper Office : — 
 
 " Christopher Milton, of Eeddinge, in the County of Berks, Esq., 
 Councellor at Lawe. His Delinquency, that he was a Commis- 
 sioner for the Kinge, under the Great Seale of Oxford, for seques- 
 tringe the Parliament's friends of three Counties ; and afterwards 
 went to Excester and lived there, and was there at the tyme of the 
 surrender, and is to have the benefitt of those Articles, as by the 
 Deputy Governor's Certificate of that place of the 16th of May, 
 1646, doth appeare. He hath taken the Nationall Covenant be- 
 fore William Barton, Minister of John Zacharies, the 20th of 
 April, 1646, and the Negative Oath heere the 8th August, 1646. 
 He compounds upon a Perticular delivered in under his hand, by 
 which he doth submit to such fine, etc., and by which it doth ap- 
 peare : 
 
 " That he is seized in fee, to him and his heirs in possession, of 
 and in a certain Messuage or Tenement scituate in St. Martin's 
 Parish, Ludgate, called the Signe of the Crosse Keys, and was of 
 the Yeerly Value, before theis troubles, £40. Personal estate he 
 hath none. 
 
 k. 
 
 ^ L Fine at Sd. is £200. 
 
 25th August, 1646, 
 Tebom Alexandee." 
 
 We may see from this that the conscience of Christo- 
 pher Milton was not a very rigid one. He took the 
 Covenant without much apparent hesitation ; yet it did 
 
 G 
 
82 LIFE or MILTON. 
 
 not secure him from what seems to be rather a heavy 
 fine, — five years' income at what had been the value of 
 his property before the war, and which must have been 
 then somewhat reduced. PhiUips tells us that his 
 " composition was made by the help of his brother's in- 
 terest ;" but this appears to us to be an unwarranted 
 assertion. Phillips was rather prone to exalting the 
 political consideration of his more distinguished uncle, 
 and we are not aware that Milton had any interest in 
 1646, and no extraordinary favour seems to have been 
 shown to the delinquent. As Exeter was surrendered, 
 not taken, it was of course agreed, that the Royalists of 
 property in it should be allowed to compound for their 
 estates. 
 
 A question arises, — how did Christopher Milton get 
 this property in Ludgate ? The simplest solution seems 
 'to be, that his father purchased it and gave it to him, 
 either when commencing his law studies, or at the time 
 of his marriage, intending to leave the bulk of his pro- 
 perty to his eldest son. That Christopher was early in 
 good circumstances is clear; for, as we have seen, in 
 1645, when he was only in his thirtieth year, he is said 
 to have been married many years before.* 
 
 The last mention of his case in the public documents 
 of those times is, that "it was reported, 21 December, 
 1649, and that [as already noticed] the fine was £200." 
 In exacting so large a sum, it is very likely that a view 
 was had to his professional gains. 
 
 We hear nothing further of Christopher Milton for 
 the next five-and-twenty years. In the summer of 1674, 
 as we have seen, he called to take leave of his brother, 
 previous to his going dowm to the country ; and in his 
 
 * See above, p. 41. 
 
CHRISTOPHER MILTON. 83 
 
 account orthe interview he informs us, that he was then 
 "a practicer of the law, and a Bencher of the Inner 
 Temple," and that he used to spend his vacations at 
 Ipswich, — where it would seem that he had some pro- 
 perty, — and that further, he was in the habit of going to 
 take leave of his brother before he left town. We may 
 thence infer, that the brothers continued to live upon 
 friendly, if not very intimate, terms. 
 
 In the charter granted to the town of Ipswich by 
 Charles II., Christopher Milton was nominated as de- 
 puty-recorder of that town. In the next reign he rose 
 still higher ; he was knighted, and made a judge. His 
 nephew's account, — written, we may observe, after his 
 death, — is that " he was a person of a modest and quiet 
 temper, preferring justice before all worldly pleasure and 
 grandeur ; but that in the beginning of the reign of James 
 II., for his known integrity and ability in law, he was 
 by some persons of quality recommended to the King ; 
 and at a call of the Sergeants received the coif, and 
 the same day was sworn one of the Barons of the Ex- 
 chequer, and soon after made one of the Judges of the 
 Common Pleas. But his years and indisposition not 
 well brooking the fatigue of public employment, he con- 
 tinued not long in either of these stations ; but, having 
 his Quietus est, retired to a country life, his study, and 
 devotion." Phillips however omits a very essential por- 
 tion of the causes of his venerable relative's elevation, — 
 namely, his compliance with the King's rehgion ; for his 
 conscience, with its usual elasticity, allowed him, when 
 beyond his seventieth year, to adopt the Roman Catho- 
 lic creed, in the hope of legal preferment. Toland's ac- 
 count of him is less favourable, and apparently more 
 just. He tells us, " that he was of a very superstitious 
 
 G 2 
 
84 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 nature, and a man of no parts or ability; and that James, 
 wanting a set of judges that could declare his will to 
 be superior to our legal constitution, appointed him 
 one of the Barons of Exchequer/' Very possibly it was 
 the Revolution that gave the old judge his Quietus est. 
 He is said* to have inhabited, in Ipswich, a house 
 which had formerly belonged to the ancient family of 
 Wingfield, a part of which he fitted up for the celebra- 
 tion of the Roman Catholic worship. He afterwards 
 moved to the village of Rushmore, about two miles from 
 that town ; where he occupied a house, now called the 
 White House, and in which he died, in the early part 
 of the year 1692, in the seventy- seventh year of his 
 age. He was buried in the Church of St. Nicholas, in 
 Ipswich, t 
 
 Sir Christopher Milton had two daughters, named 
 Mary and Catherine ; and a son, named Thomas, who 
 was bred to the law, and succeeded his uncle Agar, in 
 his situation in the Crown Office. Milton's grand- 
 daughter, Mrs. Foster, informed Dr. Birch that her great- 
 uncle Christopher had, beside those two daughters, a 
 third, who was married to a Mr. Pendlebury, a clergy- 
 man ; that the others never married, and that they lived 
 for many years at Highgate, and that one of them died 
 at her (Mrs. Foster's) house, at Lower Holloway, at the 
 age of about ninety years, j 
 
 * Todd, from the information of tlie E-ev. James Ford. 
 
 t "1692, March 22. Sir Christopher Melton, of Eushmore, was 
 buried in the church of this parish." Eegistry of St. Nicholas, ap. 
 Todd, who also informs us that there is an entry in it of C. Milton's 
 daughter Mary, March 29, 1656. 
 
 X See Hunter, Milton, p. 34. 
 
Milton's daughters. 85 
 
 ANNE, MAEY, AND DEBOEAH MILTON. 
 
 We are now to consider Milton in his relation to his 
 daughters more fully than we have done hitherto. Of 
 these, we see, he had three, all by his first wife. Anne, 
 called probably after his sister, who may have been her 
 godmother, had, we are told, a fair face, but she had 
 some kind of impediment in her speech, — for which 
 reason her father excused her from reading to him like 
 her sisters, — and she was in her person somewhat de- 
 formed, or, as it was termed, " lame and helpless.'' She 
 married notwithstanding, after her father's death, when 
 she was probably about nine and twenty or thirty years 
 of age. Her husband is called a master builder, pro- 
 bably answering to the architect of the present day, so 
 that there may have been nothing derogatory in the al- 
 liance. Like her mother and stepmother she died in 
 childbed, of her first child. 
 
 Of Mary, the second daughter, we know much less. 
 She was named after her mother, " whom," Aubrey says, 
 " she resembled more than her sisters did ;" perhaps we 
 might extend the resemblance to her mind and disposi- 
 tion. She seems to have been, by far, the most unami- 
 able of the three. We have seen a very unfeeling ex- 
 pression respecting her father attributed to her, and it 
 Avas her probably that he had chiefly in view when he 
 spoke of the unkindness of his children. She died un- 
 married, but in what year we are not informed. 
 
 Deborah was the youngest and the best of Milton's 
 children. She resembled her father in face, and perhaps 
 in temper and disposition. It was natural therefore 
 that she should have been his favourite, as we are told 
 she was. As she was only twelve years old at the time 
 
86 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 of her father's last marriage, it does not seem reasonable 
 to include her among those whom he charged with un- 
 kindness, though she may at times have acted under the 
 influence of her sisters. Aubrey tells us that she was 
 her father's amanuensis, and that he taught her Latin 
 and to read Greek. Some time before her father's death, 
 — in consequence, according to her daughter's account, 
 of the ill-treatment she received from her stepmother, 
 — she went over to Ireland, to Dublin we may presume, 
 with a lady named Merian, probably a friend of Lady 
 Ranelagh's, who undertook to provide for her. She 
 might then have been from eighteen to twenty years 
 of age. With this lady she remained till her marriage, 
 which may have taken place before her father's decease, 
 as, though in the legal proceedings which followed it she 
 is termed Deborah Milton, the receipt for the money 
 paid her by her stepmother is signed by herself and 
 her husband. Aubrey tells us expressly, that she mar- 
 ried in Dublin "one Mr. Clarke, a mercer, sells silk;" 
 and her daughter adds, "that she (and her husband) 
 came over again to England during the troubles in Ire- 
 land under King James IL," — that is, probably in the 
 year 1687 ; so that she had, it would appear, been at 
 least fifteen years out of England. We may presume 
 that her husband commenced business either as a mer- 
 cer or as a master silk-weaver in Spitalfields, and that 
 hence it is that the biographers, with an utter disregard 
 of the statements of Aubrey and her daughter, follow 
 Warton in saying briefly that " she married Abraham 
 Clarke, a weaver, in Spitalfields." She had a large fa- 
 mily of seven sons and three daughters. She died in 
 August, 1727, in the seventy-sixth year of her age. 
 Richardson and Professor Ward, of Gresham College, 
 
ANNE, MARY, DEBORAH MILTON. 87 
 
 were both well acquainted with her, and learned from 
 her niany particulars respecting her father. She is said 
 to have been a woman of a very cultivated understand- 
 ing, and not inelegant of manners. The excellent and 
 amiable Joseph Addison, out of veneration to her illus- 
 trious sire, sought her out ; and finding her in narrow 
 circumstances, made her a handsome present. We are 
 told that when she came, at his desire, to wait upon 
 him, he was so struck with her resemblance to the pic- 
 tures of Milton, that he said to her, " Madam, you need 
 no other voucher; your face is a sufficient testimonial 
 whose daughter you are." On his representation, the 
 Princess of Wales (afterwards Queen Caroline) sent her 
 a purse of fifty guineas. We are also told that in 1725, 
 ■ — that is, two years before her death, — Vertue the en- 
 graver took Faithorn's crayon- drawing of Milton, with 
 some other engravings and paintings reputed to be like- 
 nesses of him, to her house. He had them brought in, 
 as if by chance, while he was conversing with her ; and 
 at the sight of Faithorn's drawing, without taking any 
 notice of the others, she suddenly cried out in great sur- 
 prise, " O Lord ! that is the picture of my father ! How 
 came you by it?" and shaking down the hair of her 
 forehead, added, "just so my father wore his hair." 
 
 Of all the children of Deborah Clarke, only two are 
 known anything of, — a son named Caleb, and her young- 
 est daughter Ehzabeth. The former went to Madras, in 
 the service of the East India Company ; and according to 
 the information given to Mr. Todd by Sir James Mack- 
 intosh, he acted as parish-clerk in that factory, where he 
 probably died. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a wea- 
 ver (whether a master or not, we are not informed) in 
 Spitalfields, by whom she had seven children, who all 
 
88 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 died before their parents. Her husband probably failed 
 in business, if a master, or became incapable of work, if 
 a mere operative, for she had to keep a small grocer's or 
 chandler's shop for their support ; first in Lower Hollo- 
 way, and then in Cock -lane, near Shoreditch Church. 
 Dr. Birch knew her, and learned from her some particu- 
 lars respecting her grandfather and his family. He de- 
 scribes her as a plain, sensible woman. In consequence 
 of his exertions, ably seconded by Johnson, Comus was 
 acted for her benefit, on the 5th of April, 1750 ; for 
 which Johnson wrote a prologue that does him honour. 
 He tells us that " she had so little acquaintance with 
 diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was 
 intended when a benefit was offered her." He further 
 informs us, that "the profits of the performance were 
 only £130, although Dr. Newton contributed largely, 
 and £20 were given by Tonson, a man who is to be 
 praised as often as he is named." He adds, that £100 
 were placed in the funds ; the rest augmented their little 
 stock, with which they removed to Islington.* Mrs. 
 Foster did not long survive this paltry addition to her 
 means of subsistence. A paragraph to the following 
 effect has been preserved from one of the newspapers of 
 the timeif — "On Thursday last. May 9, 1754, died at 
 Islington, in the sixty-sixth year of her age, after a long 
 and painful illness, which she sustained with Christian 
 fortitude, Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, granddaughter of Mil- 
 
 * Todd however states, on t lie autliority of Isaac Eeed, that the re- 
 ceipts of the house were only £147. 14s. 6d., from which £80 were de- 
 ducted for the expenses, leaving not quite £70 for Mrs. Foster. The 
 donations of Newton and Tonson are probably not to be included in this 
 sum, as they seem to be by Todd ; who also gives Warton, and not 
 Johnson, as the authority for the statement in the text. 
 
 t In Memoirs of T. HoUis, i. 114, quoted by Mitford. 
 
ANNE, MARY, DEBORAH MILTON. 89 
 
 ton." With her ended the direct Hne of John Milton. 
 It seems as if it were a law of nature, that those on 
 whom Heaven has bestowed its noblest gifts, and whose 
 mental productions are destined to continue during ages 
 of ages to yield profit and delight to mankind, should 
 not be permitted to keep up their name in the same 
 manner as the ordinary race of mortals. They either 
 live and die unmarried, like Virgil, Tasso, Camoes, Pope ; 
 or, if married, their posterity ends in, at furthest, the third 
 generation, like Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton. But their 
 name remains flourishing in everlasting verdure, glori- 
 ously distinguished from those of the high-titled, 
 
 " whose ancient but ignoble blood 
 May have crept through scoundrels ever since the Flood." 
 
 This we regard as the most fitting place to treat of 
 Milton's behaviour toward his daughters, which is gene- 
 rally regarded as the darkest spot in his history. 
 
 Mrs. Foster gave Dr. Birch to understand that her 
 grandfather treated his daughters with much harshness, 
 and was so indifferent about their mental culture that he 
 would not even let them learn to write. Phillips tells us 
 that he made the two youngest — for the eldest was ex- 
 cused on account of her imperfect articulation — read to 
 him the Hebrew (and he thinks the Syriac), Greek, Latin, 
 Italian, Spanish, and French languages, though they only 
 understood their mother-tongue. This naturally was ex- 
 tremely irksome, and they complained bitterly of it ; and 
 " at length," he adds, " they were all (even the eldest 
 also) sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts 
 of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, par- 
 ticularly embroidery in gold and silver." The same ac- 
 count of their reading to him was also given by Deborah 
 
90 LIEE OF MILTON. 
 
 to Dr. Ward, according to whom she said that they read 
 eight languages to their father ; yet what use he could 
 have had for any but the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, 
 and perhaps the French, we are unable to discern. She 
 also, he said, could repeat the beginning of the Ihas, 
 and of Ovid's Metamorphoses ; yet surely Milton must 
 have had these by heart himself. We may however sup- 
 pose, that, when meditating on Paradise Lost, he may 
 have had Ovid's account of creation frequently read for 
 him, and so these lines may have fixed themselves in his 
 daughter's memory, — more especially as there is some 
 reason for believing that she may have understood them ; 
 but we cannot see how she could have gotten the first 
 lines of the Ilias by heart, for she certainly was igno- 
 rant of Greek. The learning to read Hebrew too, must 
 have been a most irksome task. Finally, it is said, that 
 in his uxoriousness he gave the whole of his property to 
 his wife, leaving his children unprovided for. This, we 
 believe, is the whole of the case against Milton. 
 
 Let us now see what can be said on the other side. 
 Mrs. Foster said that her grandfather would not let his 
 daughters even learn to write. Now they must have 
 known how to write, for their receipts are extant for the 
 money paid them by their stepmother ; and Aubrey posi- 
 tively asserts that Deborah Milton was her father's amanu- 
 ensis. He adds, that her father " taught her Latin and 
 to read Greek," by which he must have meant that she 
 could read Latin with understanding, while she only 
 knew the Greek characters. Deborah was probably one 
 of the copyists of the pieces in the Cambridge MS., 
 most of whom were females. Her own account to Dr. 
 Ward was, that she and her sisters were " not sent to 
 school, but taught at home by a mistress kept for that 
 
ANNE, MARY, DEBORAH MILTON. 91 
 
 purpose," which might seem to indicate that they had a 
 resident governess, which would open to us a new fea- 
 ture in Milton's domestic economy in the interval be- 
 tween his second and his last marriage, and also ex- 
 plains the declaration ascribed to him, that he ''had 
 spent the greater part of his estate in providing for 
 them ;" in which he of course included the cost of hav- 
 ing them taught embroidery, and the separate establish- 
 ment which he seems to have maintained for them for 
 the last four or five years of his life. 
 
 It thus appears that Milton did not neglect the edu- 
 cation of his children. They were probably taught as 
 much, or rather more, as any young women in their rank 
 of life at that time. 
 
 The only remaining charge is, that he left his property 
 away from them. The superior claims of his wife we 
 will presently notice ; here it is to be observed, that the 
 two eldest had a genteel trade by which tliey could 
 support themselves, and that Mrs. Merian had promised 
 to provide for Deborah, — a promise which she seems 
 to have performed. Their father left them beside his 
 claim for their mother's fortune of £1000, which had 
 never been paid him, and which their uncle Milton de- 
 clared that he regarded as good money, as it was "in 
 the hands of persons of ability, able to pay the same, 
 being their grandmother and uncle ; and he had seen the 
 grandfather's will, wherein it is particularly directed to 
 be paid unto them by his executors." It would there- 
 fore seem that Mr. Powell, when making his will, left, 
 probably with Milton's assent, his daughter's fortune to 
 the issue of her marriage ; for only one child had been 
 born when he died. If then they were left portionless, 
 it was owing to the dishonesty of their grandmother and 
 uncle, and not to the unkindness of their father. 
 
92 LIFE or MILTON. 
 
 ELIZABETH MILTON. 
 
 Milton's third and last wife was, as we have seen, 
 EHzabeth, daughter of Mr. Randle Minshull, of Wistas- 
 ton, near Nantwich, in the county of Chester,* to whom 
 he was introduced by his friend Dr. Paget, who was re- 
 lated to the Minshull family. As it appears from the 
 parish register of Wistaston that she was baptized on the 
 30th of December, 1638, she was probably born some 
 time in that month, being about thirty years younger 
 than her husband ; he being in his fifty-sixth, she in her 
 twenty-sixth year, when they were married in 1664. She 
 was probably a handsome young woman at the time. 
 Newton says that he was told by a gentleman who knew 
 her in Cheshire, that her hair was of a golden hue, — a 
 colour usually associated with some degree of personal 
 beauty. He thinks that Milton had her in his mind's 
 eye when drawing the portrait of his Eve ; but that part 
 of the poem must have been written some time before 
 his marriage. Aubrey, who knew her personally, says 
 she was " a genteel person, of a peaceful and agreeable 
 humour." She appears to have had a high degree of 
 respect and veneration for her husband, and to have 
 made him an excellent wife, studying his comfort in 
 every way. To reward her for her care, he left her what 
 fortune he died possessed of. We have seen that he re- 
 garded his children as having no claim on him, being 
 already provided for. But as his will was merely nun- 
 cupative and irregular, they disputed it after his death, 
 and she was obliged to make a compromise with them, 
 
 * See the pedigree of tlie Mynshull family given by Mr. Marsh, of 
 Warrington, from the Cheshire Visitation of 1663-4, and the Lanca- 
 shire Visitation of 1664-5, in Notes and Queries, vol. ix. p. 38. 
 
ELIZABETH MILTON. 93 
 
 giving them £100 apiece.* She retired to her native 
 county, vrhere she survived her husband fifty -three years. 
 She died in 1727, the same year as her stepdaughter 
 Deborah, in the eighty-ninth year of her age. She was 
 a member of the Baptist society. 
 
 Hard things have been said of Mrs. Mihon, but we 
 doubt if with much foundation of truth. Mrs. Foster 
 said that it was her ill-treatment made her mother go to 
 Ireland with Mrs. Merian ; but surely the prospect of 
 residing in the house of a lady, of perhaps some fashion, 
 with a promise of being provided for, may have been 
 inducement enough for her taking this step, without the 
 additional stimulus of ill-usage at home. Besides, it is 
 very probable that Deborah was at that time living with 
 her sisters, and not at her father's. Again, Phillips says 
 of his uncle's wife that " she persecuted his children in 
 his lifetime, and cheated them at his death." By this 
 last assertion is meant of course that she induced him to 
 make a will in her favour ; but he knows little of Milton 
 who suspects him of uxoriousness at any period of his 
 life, and the vigour of his faculties remained unimpaired 
 to the last. In this matter he acted, as we have seen, on 
 the principles of justice, leaving his property to the per- 
 son whom he deemed to have the highest claim on him. 
 We are also to recollect that Phillips did not write till 
 twenty years after his uncle's death, and that therefore 
 his recollection of circumstances may not have been very 
 accurate ; and he may have adopted the prejudices of his 
 cousins, and visited the iniquity of their mother's family 
 on their father's widow. The last charge made against 
 Mrs. Milton is by Richardson, who says that she used 
 frequently to teaze him for his carelessness and ignorance 
 * See Note I. at end of this Part. 
 
94 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 about money -matters, and adds that she was a termagant. 
 This however is totally opposed to the account of her 
 given by Aubrey, who knew her ; and we must confess 
 we prefer his testimony to that of the lively painter, who 
 then assures us that an offer was made of re-appointing 
 her husband to the office of Latin Secretary, and that 
 she urged him vehemently to accept of it, whereupon 
 he made reply: "Thou art in the right. You, as other 
 women, would ride in your coach ; for me, my aim is 
 to live and die an honest man." We do not regard this 
 anecdote either as very probable, though office was of- 
 fered to Thurloe, CromwelFs secretary. 
 
 EDWAED AND JOHN PHILLIPS. 
 
 The last of Milton's family of whom it appears neces- 
 sary to give an account are his two nephews, the sons of 
 his sister Anne, Edward and John Phillips. As the for- 
 mer, who became his biographer, tells us that he himself 
 was ten, and his brother nine years old when they went 
 to live with their uncle in 1641, we may presume that 
 the former was born in 1631, and the latter in 1632. 
 
 In March, 1648, Edward Phillips went to Magdalen 
 College in Oxford. It is not certain whether he remained 
 with his uncle up to that period or not ; but as he says 
 himself that he was five or six years with him, he may 
 have left him a couple of years before that time. He 
 remained at Oxford till 1651, and then left it without 
 having graduated. We hear nothing further of him till 
 1656, when he published an edition of the Poems of 
 Drummond of Hawthornden, and a translation of Mont- 
 alvo's pastoral romance. The Shepherd of Eilidas, from 
 the Spanish. Two years later we find him appearing as 
 the author of a work which one might not have expected 
 
EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS. 95 
 
 from the pupil of Milton. It was named Mysteries of 
 Love and Eloquence, etc., the Art of Wooing as managed 
 in the Spring Garden, Hyde Park, the New Exchange, etc. 
 In 1659 he pubUshed a dictionary, named A New World 
 of Words. He was also about this time employed to 
 edit and continue Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle, a task 
 which he continued to discharge for every successive re- 
 print for many years. We may here observe, that both 
 he and his brother had adopted political principles the 
 very opposite of those held by their uncle, and had joined 
 the ranks of the Royalists. How often in life is this phe- 
 nomenon presented to us, of men quitting the religious 
 or political principles in which they have been sedulously 
 nurtured ! The usual cause is, the reins of discipline 
 having been tightened too much ; and perhaps this may 
 have been the case in this instance also. 
 
 After the Restoration, in the period from 1660 to 1666, 
 we find Edward Phillips employed as tutor to the son of 
 the celebrated John Evelyn ; and as his pupil distin- 
 guished himself at the University, we may presume that 
 he had been well instructed. Phillips then accepted a 
 similar employment in the family of the Earl of Pem- 
 broke ; and when he had finished there, he entered that 
 of the Popish Earl of Arlington, as reader to himself and 
 tutor to his daughter and heiress, the Lady Isabella, and 
 her cousin Henry Bennet.* During this period, as we 
 
 * " Oct. 24, 1663. Mr. Edward Phillips came to be my son's precep- 
 tor. This gentleman was nephew to Milton, who wrote against Salma- 
 sius' Defensio, but was not at all infected with his principles, though 
 brought up by him." 
 
 " Feb. 24, 1665. Mr. Phillips, preceptor to my son, went to be with 
 the Earl of Pembroke's son, my Lord Herbert." 
 
 " Sept. 18, 1677. I proposed Mr. Phillips, nephew of Milton, to the 
 service of my Lord Chamberlain [Arlington] who wanted a scholar to 
 read to and entertain him sometimes." — Evelyns Diary. 
 
96 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 have seen, he used to visit his uncle regularly, and give 
 him any aid he could in revising the manuscripts of his 
 works. In 1675 he published his Theatrum Poetarum, 
 or account of the principal ancient and modern, but 
 chiefly English, poets. He did various literary jobs for 
 the booksellers, such as translations, etc. ; and from a 
 passage in his Life of Milton, we might infer that he 
 kept a school in his later years. In 1694 he published 
 a translation of his uncle's Latin Letters, to which he 
 prefixed the well-known and precious piece of biography 
 so often quoted in these pages. He probably died not 
 long after, for he was no longer living when Toland 
 wrote his Life of Milton in 1698. The character of 
 Edward Phillips appears to have been that of an amiable, 
 honourable, learned, and industrious man of letters. 
 
 John Phillips was superior to his brother in talent, 
 but far below him in moral worth. We have seen that 
 in 1651 he was deputed by his uncle to answer one of 
 the assailants of his Defence. He was probably at that 
 time acting as clerk to him in his public office. He 
 could hardly have been so when, in 1655, he published 
 his witty but licentious poem, the Satire against Hypo- 
 crites ; in which he describes a Sunday, a Christening, 
 and a Wednesday-East as they were held by the rigidly 
 righteous of those days. This poem went through seve- 
 ral editions. In 1659 he published Montelion, or the 
 Prophetical Almanac, in ridicule of the noted Lilly the 
 Astrologer, who was then in high repute ; and next year, 
 a mock romance on the Royalist side, and ridiculing the 
 Commonwealth's-men. It was named Don Lamberto, 
 from General Lambert ; and Sir Harry Vane and others 
 figure in it. In thus attacking men under persecution 
 he showed alike his want of taste and want of feeling. 
 
EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS. 97 
 
 In 1672 he published a travestie of the fifth and sixth 
 books of the JEneis ; he also published a licentious trans- 
 lation of Don Quixote,* and various other things. After 
 the Revolution he became the conductor of a monthly 
 journal, called the Monthly Mercury. He is supposed 
 to have lived till the year 1705, and to have continued 
 writing to the last. Wood, — but his dicta are not to 
 be received implicitly, — says of him : " A man of very 
 loose principles, atheistical, forsakes his wife and chil- 
 dren, makes no provision for them." 
 
 * " The translation of Don Quixote, published in 1682, may also be 
 specified as incredibly vulgar, and without the least perception of the 
 tone which the original author has preserved." (Hallam, Lit. of Europe, 
 iii. 553.) Mr. Hallam was apparently ignorant of the name of the 
 translator. He is speaking of the slang which then prevailed in Eng- 
 lish literature. 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 MILTON'S PRIENDS, 
 
 THOMAS YOIJNa. 
 
 Thomas Young, as we have seen, was engaged by the 
 elder Milton to mstruct his son in private. Aubrey's 
 account of him is, that he was " a Puritan in Essex, who 
 cut his hair short." Warton tells us, from a manuscript 
 history of Jesus College, Cambridge, of which Young 
 was Master, that he was a native of Scotland, apparently 
 of Perthshire. In 1623 he was invited by the Enghsh 
 merchants settled at Hamburg to assume the office of 
 their spiritual pastor. He accepted the invitation ; and 
 during his residence there his former pupil wrote him a 
 Latin epistle, dated London, March 26, 1625, and his 
 fourth Latin Elegy in 1627. Young, as there is reason 
 to suppose, returned to England in this or early in the 
 following year, and settled at Stowmarket, in the county 
 of Suffolk ; whence he appears to have written to Mil- 
 ton, inviting him to go and spend some time with him. 
 In his answer, dated Cambridge, July 21, 1628, Milton 
 promises to visit him in the following Spring, in order to 
 enjoy the charms of the season and of his conversation, 
 away from the din and bustle of the town. He speaks 
 of his Suffolk Stoa as vying with that of Zeno or Cicero's 
 Tusculum, where, like another Serranus or Curius, in his 
 
THOMAS YOUNG. 99 
 
 moderate circumstances he gently ruled with a royal mind 
 in his little farm. Whether this language is figurative, 
 or that Young had in reality become the occupier of a 
 small farm, is not certain. The latter seems the more 
 probable supposition ; and probably to his charge of a 
 Puritan congregation he united — according to the plan 
 afterwards proposed by his pupil — the occupation of an 
 agriculturist. 
 
 Young was one of those whose initials went to the 
 formation of the name Smectymnuus. He was also a 
 member of the Assembly of Divines. In 1644 he was 
 made Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, by the Par- 
 liament. On his refusing to take the Engagement, he was 
 ejected in 1662 ; and he retired to his former residence 
 at Stowmarket, where he died and was buried, having, 
 as Warton says, held the vicarage of that place for thirty 
 years. 
 
 Beside his share in Smectymnuus, Warton supposes 
 Young to have published in 1639 a learned work in 
 Latin, on the observation of Sunday, and entitled Dies 
 Dominica. He also preached a sermon, entitled Hope's 
 Incouragement, before the House of Commons, on a Past- 
 day, Pebruary 20, 1644-5, which was printed by order 
 of the House. In the Dedication he subscribes himself, 
 "Thomas Young, Sancti Evangelii in comitatu SufFolciensi 
 Minister." Yet, if Warton be correct in his statement, 
 he was at that time Master of Jesus College ; for he says 
 that he was admitted to his office there by the Earl of 
 Manchester in person, April 12, 1644. Warton also 
 tells us, from Neale's History of the Puritans, that at the 
 time of his appointment he held a London preachership 
 in Duke's Place. 
 
 In his Life by Clarke the Calvinist it is stated of 
 
 H 2 
 
100 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 Young that he was " a man of great learning, of much 
 prudence and piety, and of great ability and fidelity in 
 the work of the ministry." 
 
 ALEXANDER GILL. 
 
 When Milton was at St. Paul's School it was kept 
 by Alexander Gill, a man of considerable learning, who 
 published in 1621 a work entitled Logonomia, the ob- 
 ject of which was that most futile of all objects, to fix 
 and reform the English language; and in 1635, another, 
 called the Sacred Philosophic of the Holy Scripture. 
 His son of the same name, the subject of the present 
 notice, was at that time one of the assistants in the 
 school ; and being a lover of learning and an admirer of 
 genius, he was naturally attracted by the future author 
 of Paradise Lost, and intimacy and friendship was the 
 result. 
 
 Alexander Gill the younger was probably born in 
 1597, for he was fifteen when he was admitted a Com- 
 moner of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1612. He had 
 two brothers, named George and Nathaniel, who were 
 also of that College, and on the foundation. Alexander 
 presented the library of his College with the old folio 
 edition of Spenser's Paerie Queene, Drayton's Polyol- 
 bion by Selden, and Bourdelotius' Lucian, in all of 
 which were poetic mottoes from the classics in his own 
 handwriting. It would seem that when he had gradu- 
 ated he became assistant to his father, on whose death, 
 in 1635,* he was appointed Master. He was at that 
 time a Doctor of Divinity, having taken that degree at 
 
 * It must liave been he therefore, and not his father, who was Mil- 
 ton's neighbour in Aldersgate- street. See above, p. 24. 
 
CHARLES DIODATI. lOJ" 
 
 Oxford in 1629. His rule at St. Paul's lasted, we are 
 told, only five years ; for he was removed on account of 
 his excessive severity. As he is said also to have been 
 an assistant in the school of the* celebrated Thomas Par- 
 naby, who left London in 1636, we must suppose that 
 he had not been continuously attached to St. Paul's. 
 His death occurred in 1642, in his forty-fifth or forty- 
 sixth year. 
 
 Gill was distinguished as a writer of Latin poetry. 
 Wood says ''he was accounted one of the best Latin 
 poets in the nation." But there is higher testimony 
 than Wood's. Three of Milton's Latin epistles are ad- 
 dressed to Gill; and in the first of them, dated from 
 Cambridge, May 20, 1628, acknowledging the receipt 
 of a Latin poem of his on the capture of some town 
 by Henry of Nassau, he terms his verses " carmina sane 
 grandia, et majestatem vere poeticam Virgilianumque 
 ubique ingenium redolentia," to which he adds other 
 highly laudatory expressions. In his third letter to him, 
 written at Horton, December 4, 1634, he returns him 
 his thanks for a copy of Hendecasyllabics, more pre- 
 cious, he says, than gold; and, w4th great modesty, 
 sends him in return his Greek version of the 114th Psalm, 
 which, as the strain of an inspired writer, he adds, ex- 
 ceeds his poem as much in the subject, as he excels the 
 translator in poetic skill. Gill had published a selection 
 of his Latin poetry in 1632, in a small duodecimo vo- 
 lume, under the title of Poetici Conatus. 
 
 CHAELES DIODATI. 
 
 Charles Diodati was the schoolfellow and most inti- 
 mate friend of Milton. He was son to Dr. Theodore 
 
102 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 Diodati, an eminent physician, a native of Geneva, of an 
 Italian family settled in that city, who came yomig to 
 England, where he married a lady of good fortune and 
 family. He was physician to Prince Henry and the 
 Princess Elizabeth, in the reign of James I. His son 
 Charles appears to have been born in 1607, the year 
 before Milton. He was educated at St. Paul's School, 
 whence he was sent to Trinity College, Oxford, where 
 he was entered as a Gentleman Commoner, February 7, 
 1621-2. He remained there till 1628, when he left it, 
 after having taken his Master's degree. He seems to 
 have spent a part of his time in Cheshire, where proba- 
 bly his mother's family resided. We also find that he 
 had a younger brother ; and it would appear that after 
 his father's death, he had, in 1637, some difficulty in 
 arranging matters with his stepmother. He died in the 
 Spring of the following year, while his friend Milton was 
 at Florence. From some passages in one of Milton's 
 letters to him, it would appear that he had adopted his 
 father's profession. 
 
 Diodati, as may be inferred from Milton's affection 
 for him, was a man of learning and talent ; but there 
 are none of his literary productions remaining, except a 
 copy of Alcaics, in an Oxford collection, on the death of 
 Camden, called Camdeni Insignia, printed in 1624, and 
 consequently written when he was sixteen; and two 
 Greek epistles to Milton, without dates, formerly in the 
 possession of Toland, and now in the British Museum.* 
 In the first of these, — evidently written when they were 
 both in London, probably in vacation time at the Uni- 
 versities, — he complains of the badness of the weather, 
 which had prevented some proposed walk of theirs, into 
 
 * Mr. Mitford has printed them at the end of his Life of Milton. 
 
CHARLES DIODATI. 103 
 
 the country it would seem, in which they were to amuse 
 themselves with philosophic and literary discussions. He 
 exhorts him to keep up his spirits and not change his 
 mind, as the fine weather must soon re-appear. In the 
 second, apparently written from Cheshire, he speaks with 
 delight of the comforts he enjoyed where he was, and of 
 the charms of the country at that season, — the month of 
 May, it would seem, — with the single drawback, that he 
 had no like-minded friend with whom he could commu- 
 nicate his ideas. He gently reproaches his friend with 
 his disregard of the charms of nature, and his poring, 
 without remission, day and night, over books ; and ex- 
 horts him to live, laugh, and enjoy his youth, relaxing 
 after the example of those old sages. " As for myself," 
 he adds, ''in all other things your inferior, in this of 
 knowing how to moderate labour, I both think myself 
 to be and am your superior." Milton addressed to Dio- 
 dati two of his Latin Elegies ; the first, when he was at 
 home, in London, under sentence of rustication from the 
 University, and when Diodati was in Cheshire, but it 
 contains no date, or anything that would enable us to 
 assign its date; and the sixth, written in December, 
 1629, in answer to a copy of verses sent him by Diodati 
 from the country, — that is of course from Cheshire, — 
 in which he had pleaded in excuse for their inferiority to 
 his usual efforts, the festivities he was partaking of with 
 his friends. Milton also wrote to him two Latin epis- 
 tles, in September, 1637. Diodati was probably at that 
 time also in Cheshire, for his correspondent terms those 
 he was residing among, Hyperboreans. In the second 
 of these he gives him an account of his aspirations and 
 his studies, and asks him to lend him a historian of 
 Venice. It might appear, from the conclusion of this 
 
104 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 epistle, that Diodati had settled in Cheshire. There is 
 also reason to suppose that Milton had already intro- 
 duced in his Comus the praises of his medical friend, 
 under the character of the " certain shepherd lad, of 
 small regard to see to, but well skilled in every virtuous 
 herb," etc. On his return from Italy, Milton, in his 
 beautiful Epitaphium Damonis, celebrated the virtues of 
 his friend, and bewailed his own deserted condition, now 
 that he was for ever deprived of his society. 
 
 HENEY LAWES. 
 
 Henry Lawes was the son of Thomas Lawes, a vicar- 
 choral of Salisbury Cathedral, and it is probable that he 
 was one of the choir-boys. At the charges of Edward, 
 Earl of Hertford, he and his brother William were in- 
 structed in music by John Cooper, who, having been in 
 Italy, had Italianized his name to Coperario. In Janu- 
 ary, 1625, Lawes was appointed, probably through his pa- 
 tron's interest, Pistoler* of the Royal Chapel ; and in the 
 November following, one of the Gentlemen of the Choir 
 belonging to it, and, soon after, Clerk of the Cheque 
 and one of the Court musicians. Lawes, who was a 
 poet and vocalist, as well as a musician, was on terms of 
 intimacy with the best poets of his time, whose verses 
 he set to music, and with the more cultivated and intel- 
 lectual of the nobility ; the children of some of whom, 
 such as the Earl of Bridgewater, he seems to have in- 
 structed. During the time of the Civil War and Com- 
 monwealth, he supported himself by teaching young 
 ladies to sing and play on the hite. His chief patro- 
 nesses, as Wood informs us, were Lady Carbury, and 
 
 * This is said to mean the person who read the Epistle. 
 
HENRY LA WES. 105 
 
 Lady Herbert of Cherburj, the daughter of the Earl 
 of Eridgewater. He was in general greatly respected 
 for his virtues, and his polite and engaging manners. 
 At the Restoration, he was re-established in his former 
 places at Court, and he composed the Coronation An- 
 them. He died in 1662, and was buried in Westmin- 
 ster Abbey. 
 
 Lawes was the favourite composer of his day. He 
 set to music all the songs in the mask of Coelum Britan- 
 nicum of that sweet poet Thomas Carew, and all the 
 lyrics of Waller; he also composed all the airs and 
 songs in the plays and poems of William Cartwright, 
 and of the Christmas Odes in Herrick's Hesperides. He 
 further composed tunes for Sandys' Paraphrase of the 
 Psalms, published in 1638. He and his brother Wil- 
 liam also composed a volume of Psalms, which was not 
 published, it is said, till 1648 ; though Milton's sonnet, 
 prefixed to it, and addressed " To Mr. H. Lawes, on the 
 puhlishing of his Airs," is dated February 9, 1645-6. 
 Lawes pubHshed in 1653, Airs and Dialogues for One, 
 Two, and Three Voices, etc., dedicated to those two 
 illustrious ladies, his constant patronesses. After his 
 death, in 1669, appeared a Second Part of these Aii's 
 and Dialogues. 
 
 Lawes was said to have been the introducer of the 
 Italian style of music into England. His great merit as 
 a composer would seem to have lain in his just adapta- 
 tion of the music to the sense of the words ; making it, 
 as Milton expresses it, " span words with just note and 
 accent." Dr. Burney however, in his History of Music, 
 speaks slightingly of Lawes as a composer. 
 
 These were the only friends of the early years of Mil- 
 
106 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 ton of whom we have any account. Doubtless he had 
 others, but their names are unknown, carent quia vate 
 sacro. Of this we may be sure, that they were of his 
 own rank in hfe ; for, as we have akeady observed, and 
 shall observe again, he sought not the society of the 
 great in the estimation of the vulgar. 
 
 After his return from Italy, and when he was settled 
 in a house of his own, and was known as an able con- 
 troversial writer, his acquaintance was sought, and he 
 obtained a new circle of friends. Of these the best 
 known are the following. 
 
 SAMUEL HAETLIB. 
 
 Samuel Hartlib, to whom Milton dedicated his tractate 
 on Education, was the son of an eminent Polish merchant 
 who had settled at Elbing, in Prussia. His mother was 
 an Englishwoman ; and he came and settled in London, 
 as Warton thinks, about the year 1640. While there, he 
 occupied himself in editing tracts on agriculture, writ- 
 ten by various persons ; and his merits were deemed to 
 be such that a handsome pension was settled on him by 
 the Parliament. His own words, in one of his prefaces, 
 are : " As long as 1 have lived in England, by wonderful 
 providences 1 have spent yearly out of my own betwixt 
 £300 and £400 a year sterling ; and when I was brought 
 to public allowances, I have had from the Parliaments 
 and Councils of State a pension of £300 sterling a year, 
 which as freely I have spent for their service and the good 
 of many." He also says that he had "erected a little 
 academy for the education of the gentry of this nation, 
 to advance piety, learning, morality, and other exercises 
 of industry, not usual in common schools." Hence we 
 
SAMUEL HARTLIB. 107 
 
 see why it was to him that Milton addressed his treatise 
 on education. 
 
 At the Restoration, as few of the engagements of the 
 preceding Government were kept, Harthb's pension re- 
 mained of course unpaid. At the close of 1662 it was 
 £700 in arrear ; and in a letter to Lord Herbert he stated 
 that " he had nothing to keep him alive, with two rela- 
 tions more, a daughter and a nephew, who were attend- 
 ing his sickly condition." He also petitioned the House 
 of Commons, stating in his petition that "he, Samuel 
 Hartlib, senior, had for thirty years and more exerted 
 himself in procuring rare collections of manuscripts in 
 all the parts of learning, which he had freely imported, 
 transcribed, and printed, and sent to such as were most 
 capable of making use of them; also the best experi- 
 ments in husbandry and manufactures, which, by print- 
 ing, he has published for the benefit of this age and pos- 
 terity." What the fate of his petition was, we are unin- 
 formed ; it probably met with neglect. We are also left 
 in ignorance of the time of his death. 
 
 The statements given above of the condition of the 
 family and fortune of Hartlib, seem hardly to accord 
 with the following passages in the diary of Samuel Pepys: 
 
 " Home and called my wife, and took her to Clodins's, to a great 
 wedding of Nan Hartlib to Mynheer Eoder, which was kept at 
 Goring House, with great state, cost, and noble company." — Diary, 
 July 10, 1660. 
 
 " AVhile I was at dinner, in came Samuel Hartlib and his brother- 
 in-law, now knighted by the King, to request my promise of a ship 
 for them to Holland."— J^*. Aiiyust 7, 1660. 
 
 In 1667 he again notices Samuel Hartlib, as it would 
 appear, as being of rather a gallant character. 
 
 Nan Hartlib was then evidently the niece, not the 
 
108 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 daughter, of the elder Hartlib, who probably had not yet 
 fallen into bad circumstances at the time of her marriage. 
 
 HENEY LAWEENCE. 
 
 Milton addressed one of his social sonnets to Lawrence, 
 whom he styles " of virtuous father virtuous son." War- 
 ton, who is duteously followed as usual by Todd, makes, 
 we think, a mistake here, when he says " of the virtuous 
 son nothing has transpired ;" for he is actually the person 
 of whom he himself gives an account, as the father. It 
 will thus appear. The sonnet, though probably subse- 
 quent to 1645, must have been written before Milton lost * 
 his sight, that is, before 1653. Now Todd quotes a letter 
 of Lawrence's, in the Harleian MSS., written in 1646, 
 from which it appears that his son was at that time only 
 thirteen years of age ; but the person to whom Milton 
 addresses his sonnet was apparently a man of about his 
 own time of life, and therefore the person who has been 
 hitherto taken for the father, of whom Warton gives the 
 following account : — 
 
 " The virtuous father, Henry Lawrence, was member for Here- 
 fordshire in the Little Parliament, which began in 1653, and was 
 active in settlings the Protectorate of Cromwell. In consequence 
 of his services he was made President of Cromwell's Council, 
 where he appears to have signed many severe and arbitrary de- 
 crees, not only against the Eoyalists, but the Brownists, Fifth- 
 Monarchymen, and other sectarists. He continued high in favour 
 with Etichard Cromwell. As innovation is progressive, perhaps 
 the son, Milton's friend, was an Independent and a still warmer 
 Eepublican. The family appears to have been seated not far from 
 Milton's neighbourhood in Buckinghamshire, for Henry Law- 
 rence's near relation William Lawrence, a writer, and appointed 
 a judge in Scotland by Cromwell, and who was in 1631 a Gentle- 
 man Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, died at Bedfont, near 
 Staines, in Middlesex, in 1682. Hence, says Milton, v. 2, — 
 
CYRIAC SKINNER. ^ 109 
 
 * Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire, 
 Where shall we sometimes meet P' etc.* 
 
 Milton, in his first reply to More, written 1654, recites among 
 the most respectable of his friends who contributed to form the 
 Commonwealth, ' Montacutium, Laurentium, summo ingenio ambos 
 optimisque artibus expolitos, etc.;' where by Montacutium we are 
 to understand Edward Montague, Earl of Manchester^t who, while 
 Lord Kimbolton, was one of the members of the House of Com- 
 mons impeached by the King, and afterwards a leader in the re- 
 bellion. I believe they both deserved this paneygric." 
 
 Mr. Todd adds that " Lawrence, the virtuous father, 
 is the author of a work suited to Milton's taste ; on the 
 subject of which, I make no doubt, he and the author 
 * by the fire helped to waste many a sullen day.' It is 
 entitled Of our Communion and Warre with Angels, etc. 
 Printed Anno Dom. 1646, 4to, 189 pages. The dedica- 
 tion is : 'To my Most deare and Most honoured Mother, 
 the Lady Lawrence! I suppose him also to be the same 
 Henry Lawrence who printed A Vindication of the Scrip- 
 tures and Christian Ordinances, 1649, Lond., 4to." 
 
 CYEIAC SKINNER. 
 
 Cyriac Skinner was the third son of William Skinner, 
 Esq., of Thornton College, in Lincolnshire, son and heir 
 of Sir Vincent Skinner, Knight. His mother was Bridget, 
 second daughter of the celebrated Sir Edward Coke, to 
 whom the poet alludes in the beginning of the first son- 
 
 * It would actually appear as if Warton supposed this sonnet to have 
 been written at Horton, and that the place of meeting was some road- 
 side alehouse. 
 
 t Rather, we think, Edward Montague, afterwards Earl of Sand- 
 wich. Milton in this passage does not speak of either him or Lawrence 
 as his friend. The only personal friends whom he names in the list of 
 the supporters of Cromwell, not the formers of the Commonwealth, are 
 Fleetwood and Overton; but those two are among the "vel amicitia 
 vel fama mihi cognitos." 
 
110 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 net which he addressed to him, — an allusion hitherto not 
 understood by the commentators. The year of his birth 
 is not known ; but as his father died in 1627, it was pro- 
 bably some years before that date. He himself died in 
 the last year of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Wood tells us that Cyriac Skinner was one of Milton's 
 pupils. From a letter of Andrew Marvell's, it appears 
 that in 1653, when Milton was living in Petty Prance, 
 Skinner " had got near him ;" but as he appears to have 
 always dwelt in the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 
 this is perhaps all that is meant. Wood also tells us that 
 Skinner was, with Harrington, Wildman, and others, a 
 member of the celebrated Rota Club, which used to hold 
 its meetings at the Turk's Head, in New Palace-yard, 
 Westminster, in which he occasionally took the chair. 
 He calls him " a merchant's son of London, an ingeni- 
 ous young gentleman, and scholar to Jo. Milton." It 
 is supposed that it is of him also that Aubrey speaks, 
 when he says that the manuscript of Milton's Idea Theo- 
 logise " is in the hands of Mr. Skinner, a merchant's son, 
 in Mark Lane. Mem. There was one Mr. Skinner, of the 
 Jerker's Office, up two pair of stairs, at the Custom 
 House." It is evident from this that Aubrey knew little 
 about Cyriac Skinner (and he was probably Wood's au- 
 thority), if it is him he means ; for he was a merchant 
 himself, and, as we have seen, the son of a country gen- 
 tleman. Warton says, " I find one Cyriac Skinner, I 
 know not if the same, a member of Trinity College, Ox- 
 ford, in 1640;" and it seems to us not at all unlikely 
 that it was the same, and that Wood was mistaken in 
 calHng him a scholar (if by that he meant a pupil) of 
 Milton's. Nothing further is known of Cyriac Skinner. 
 
 Exclusive however of the two sonnets addressed to 
 
CYRIAC SKINNER. Ill 
 
 Cjriac Skinner, the name has obtained some celebrity in 
 connection with Milton's great theologic work. From 
 the passage of Aubrey, quoted above, it appears that 
 such a work was known to exist ; but no one had any 
 idea of what had been its fate. At length, in the year 
 1823, Mr. Lemon, the Deputy Keeper of the State Papers, 
 when making his researches in the Old State Paper Of- 
 fice, chanced to find in one of the presses a Latin manu- 
 script with the title " Johannis Miltoni Angli de Doctrina 
 Christiana, ex Sacris duntaxat Libris petita, Disquisi- 
 tionum Libri duo posthumi." It was wrapped up in two 
 or three sheets of printed paper, with a great many letters, 
 informations, etc., relating to the Popish Plots of 1677 
 and 1678, and the Rye House Plot of 1683. The parcel 
 also contained a complete and corrected copy of what are 
 called Milton's State Letters ; and the whole was enclosed 
 in an envelope, addressed To Mr. Skinner, MerchK 
 
 This then, — for no one that reads it can have a doubt 
 of it, — was the celebrated treatise, erroneously termed by 
 Aubrey, Idea Theologiae. The question is, how it came 
 to be in the State Paper Oifice. Mr. Lemon made at first 
 various conjectures, such as a seizure of the papers of 
 Cyriac Skinner when he was engaged in one of the many 
 conspiracies of the time, etc. ; but his further researches 
 discovered the truth, to the following effect. 
 
 There was a person named Daniel Skinner, in all pro- 
 bability a nephew of Cyriac's, and who, it is likely, was 
 also Aubrey's " merchant's son in Mark Lane." He was 
 a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and it was to him, 
 and not to his uncle, that Milton had consigned the manu- 
 script treatise, which he sent over to Holland, along with 
 a transcript of the State Letters, in order to have them 
 printed by Elzevir. His own account is : " The works of 
 
112 LIFE OF MILTON. 
 
 Milton having been left behind him to me, which, out of 
 pure indiscretion, not dreaming any prejudice might ac- 
 crue to me, I had agreed with a printer at Amsterdam to 
 have printed. As good fortune would have it, he has not 
 printed one tittle of them. About a month ago, there 
 creeps out into the world a little imperfect book of Mil- 
 ton's State Letters, procured to be printed by one Pitts, 
 a bookseller in London, which he had bought of a poor 
 fellow that had formerly got them surreptitiously from 
 Milton." Perhaps this publication gave some uneasi- 
 ness to the Government, and inquiries were made after 
 other manuscripts of Milton's ; for we find that on the 
 20th November, 1676, Dan. Elzevir wrote as follows to 
 Sir Joseph Williamson, one of the Secretaries of State : 
 — " That about a year before Mr. Skinner put into his 
 hands this collection of Letters, and a Treatise on Theo- 
 logy, with directions to print them ; but that on examin- 
 ing them he found many things in them which, in his 
 opinion, had better be suppressed than divulged ; that 
 he declined printing them ; and that Mr. Skinner had 
 lately been at Amsterdam, had expressed himself to be 
 highly gratified that he had not commenced the printing 
 of those works, and then took moay the manuscripts!' 
 
 It being known now that the MSS. were in the posses- 
 sion of Skinner, and that he was in Paris, Dr. Isaac Bar- 
 row, the Master of his College, wrote to him the following 
 February, ordering him to return under penalty of expul- 
 sion. " We do also warn you," he says, ''that if you shall 
 publish any writing mischievous to the Church or State, 
 you will thence incur a forfeiture of your interest here. 
 I hope God will give you the wisdom and grace to take 
 warning." In the letter to a friend, to whom he enclosed 
 this, he says : " I am sorry for the miscarriages of that 
 
CYRIAC SKINNER. 113 
 
 wild young many Dr. Barrow's letter was delivered to 
 Skinner, before witness, in the following month, by a Mr. 
 Perwich, who writes thus to the Secretary of Sir Joseph 
 Williamson : — " I found him much surprised, and yet 
 at the same time slighting any constraining orders of 
 the Superior of his College, or any benefit he expected 
 thence; but as to Milton's works [wJiicK] he intended 
 to have printed, though he saith that part which he had 
 in MSS. are no way to be objected to either with regard 
 to royalty and \jf orj government, he hath desisted from 
 causing them to be printed, having left them in Holland ; 
 and that he intends, notwithstanding the College sum- 
 mons, to go for Italy this summer." 
 
 It is probable however that Skinner was induced to 
 return to England, where he had an interview with Sir 
 Joseph Williamson, who prevailed on him to surrender 
 his manuscripts ; and as Sir Joseph, instead of, as had 
 been the custom, carrying away his papers when he went 
 out of office, left them after him, Milton's treatise re- 
 mained undiscovered and unknown till the time arrived 
 when it could be published without injury to his fame. 
 
114 
 
 NOTES, 
 
 Note A. 
 
 AUTHOEITIES. 
 
 MiLTOisr's own Latin poems supply a few incidents of liis life; and 
 in his Apology for Smectymnuus and his Defensio Secunda, he 
 has furnished us with several interesting circumstances of his 
 early life and his travels on the Continent. Trom his Latin letters 
 also a few particulars may be gleaned. 
 
 John Aubrey, the celebrated antiquary, who was personally ac- 
 quainted with Milton, left in manuscript several circumstances 
 relating to the biography of the poet. These furnished materials 
 to Wood for his account of Milton in the Athense Oxonienses, 
 and they have been published in the present century. 
 
 Edward Phillips, the poet's youngest nephew, when publishing 
 a translation of his uncle's Latin Epistles in 1694, prefixed to it 
 an account of his life. This, though more brief than were to be 
 desired, is extremely interesting, and is valuable as being the work 
 of one so intimately connected with its subject. But we must 
 recollect that it was probably written from memory only, more 
 than twenty years after the death of the poet, and nearly half a 
 century from the time that Phillips had been residing in his house. 
 It may therefore not be free from error. 
 
 In 1698, four years after Phillips, John Toland, the well-known 
 deistic writer, prefixed a Life to the folio edition of Milton's prose 
 works. It is written in a grave and manly tone, and furnishes 
 some additional particulars. His account of his materials is as 
 follows : — " I heard some particulars from a person that had once 
 been his amanuensis, which were confirmed to me by his daughter, 
 now dwelling in London, and by a letter written to me, at my 
 
AUTHORITIES. 115 
 
 desire, by his last wife, who is still alive. I perused the papers of 
 one of his nephews, learned what I could in discourse with the 
 other, and lastly consulted such of his acquaintance as, after the 
 best inquiry, I was able to discover." It may surprise one after 
 this to find the Life so meagre as it is ; but the truth is, biography 
 is an art, and those who do not possess it are unable to make a 
 proper use of the materials which may be at their disposal. 
 
 In 1725 Elijah Teuton prefixed an elegant sketch of Milton's 
 Life to an edition of his poems ; but it contained nothing that 
 was not previously known. 
 
 Jonathan Eichardson, the painter, published in 1734 — in con- 
 junction with his son, who possessed the learning in which he was 
 himself deficient — Notes on Milton, to which he prefixed a Life, 
 containing a few particulars not to be found in those of Toland or 
 Phillips, and which he had obtained from Pope, or from the poet's 
 granddaughter. 
 
 The learned and laborious Dr. Thomas Birch, edited in 1738 a 
 new edition of the prose works ; and in the Life which he prefixed 
 to it, his researches enabled him to add several interesting par- 
 ticulars. He was the first to direct attention to what is called the 
 Cambridge Manuscript of Comus and some of the other poems. 
 
 Newton's edition of Milton's Paradise Lost appeared first in 
 1749. The Life is tamely but impartially written, and contains 
 hardly any additional matter. 
 
 The Life of Milton has since been written by the vigorous but 
 strongly prejudiced Johnson, the tame and super-elegant Hayley, 
 the dry and ponderous Todd,* the impetuous and violent Symmons, 
 the just, moderate, and elegant Mitford, and others ; but of neces- 
 sity they could add little to the previous stock. Thomas Warton 
 had however, in the second edition of the Minor Poems, in 1791, 
 brought to light from the archives of Doctors' Commons, Milton's 
 Nuncupative Will and the Depositions connected with it, which 
 furnish some very interesting particulars respecting the domestic 
 life of the poet in his latter years. Early in the present century, 
 Mr. Lemon discovered in the State Paper Office various docu- 
 ments relating to the Powell family, and also made extracts from 
 the Orders of Council during the time of Milton's secretaryship, 
 all of which appeared for the first time in 1809 in Todd's second 
 
 * We trust we shall be excused when we say that, in our opinion, Todd's Life 
 of Milton is the very heau ideal of bad biography. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 NOTES. 
 
 edition of the Poetical "Works. Pinally, in 1823, the researches 
 of Mr. Lemon brought to light the long-lost De Doctrina Chris- 
 tiana, and some documents connected with it, which will be found 
 in the Bishop of "Winchester's Preliminary Observations, and in 
 the later editions of Todd's Milton. Additional particulars re- 
 lating to Milton and his family have been discovered by Mr. 
 Hunter, and published by him in his tract entitled ' Milton.' 
 
 Por our account of Milton's family and friends we have been 
 chiefly indebted to Warton in his edition of the Minor Poems, and 
 to Godwin's Lives of Edward and John Phillips. 
 
 Note B. 
 
 THE MILTO]!f FAMILY. 
 
 The account of the Milton family given in the text, and derived 
 from Phillips and Aubrey, — which last had his information chiefly 
 from Milton himself or his brother, — may be regarded as the 
 family account. We are therefore disposed to look on it as being, 
 like such accounts in general, true in the main, though possibly 
 incorrect in some of the particulars. Among the circumstances 
 which we should feel inclined to regard as correct, are those of 
 Milton's grandfather having held an employment under the Crown, 
 and his having sent his son to the adjacent University. These 
 points however have been of late contested by the learned and in- 
 genious Mr. Hunter, in his tract on Milton. We will here state 
 his objections. 
 
 "Much," says he, "as I have seen of documentary evidence 
 relating to Shotover at that period, such as Presentments and 
 Accounts, which are the kind of documents in which we might 
 expect to find the name, I have seen no mention of any Milton 
 having held any office in the Forest, but only having transactions 
 with those who did so." He does not however inform us of what 
 years these documents were ; and if they were no older than those 
 of which he gives the date, they cannot be held to prove anything 
 either way. 
 
 Among the Eecords of the Exchequer, Mr. Hunter tells us, is 
 a series of Bolls, named the Becusant Bolls, in which are entered 
 the fines levied on Becusants, as those were termed who did not 
 show their acquiescence in the Beformation by attending at their 
 parish churches. "Each county," says Mr. Hunter, "is treated 
 
THE MILTON FAMILY. 117 
 
 apart ; and in the EoU for Oxfordshire, of the forty-third of Queen 
 Elizabeth, 1601, we find the name of ' Eichard Milton, of Stanton 
 St. John, yeoman.' On the 13th of July, 1601, this person was 
 fined in the sum of £60, for not having resorted to his parish 
 church for the three months following the 6th of December, 1600. 
 This was ruinous work to a family of but slender fortunes ; but he 
 was not subdued by it, for a second fine, of the same amount, was 
 imposed upon him soon after, for not having attended church 
 from the 13th of July, 1601, to the 4th of October following, nor 
 having made his submission, nor promised to be conformable, pur- 
 suant to the statute of the twenty-third of Elizabeth." 
 
 "We have therefore," he pursues, "found a Milton, living on 
 the borders of Shotover Forest, a man of a certain substance, and 
 BO zealously attached to the ancient form and order of the English 
 Church, that he ventured to incur the severe and extreme penal- 
 ties that were imposed upon him ; and since he lived at the close 
 of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which is the chronological period 
 of the grandfather of the poet, it can hardly be doubted, that in 
 this Eichard Milton of Stanton St. John, we have found the poet's 
 grandfather, by whom his father is said to have been disinherited." 
 
 This is certainly rather like jumping to a conclusion. Might it 
 not have occurred to the mind of so acute a person as Mr. Hunter, 
 that Milton's grandfather might have been dead in 1601, and that 
 his son John might have been an only son, if not an only child, 
 and so the family have been extinct in Oxfordshire ? He himself 
 acknowledges that the phrase, "natus genere honesto/^* which. 
 Milton uses when speaking of himself, would not be very correct 
 if his grandfather had been only a yeoman ; and he endeavours to 
 get over this difficulty by supposing, that the yeoman of the Eoll 
 was written " by no friendly hand," — a perfectly gratuitous assump- 
 tion. He also acknowledges the fact of the Spread Eagle being 
 the armorial ensign of Milton's family, and he has not shown that 
 the yeomen of those days were entitled to have armorial bearings. 
 
 Mr. Hunter's doubt as to the University education of Milton's 
 father is thus stated : — 
 
 " We are told that he was sent by his father to Christ Church, 
 but no trace of him as a member of that house is now to be found ; 
 
 * This answers to Pope's " Of gentle bloods," when speaking of his family 
 of both sides, i. e. belonging to the gentry. Heinsius says, " L. Elzevirus ad- 
 finiiat certo sibi constare hominem (Milton) esse nobili loco natum," 
 
118 NOTES. 
 
 and if any such trace existed, it could hardly have escaped the 
 research of two such men as Anthony Wood and Dr. Philip Bliss." 
 But we find that Wood also did not succeed in finding any trace 
 of Milton's having had a degree at Oxford, as he himself stated 
 to Aubrey. 
 
 Note C. 
 Milton's prwisHMENT at the xjniteesitt. 
 This fact we learn from the poet himself : — 
 
 " Jam nee arundiferam mihi eura revisere Camum, 
 
 Nee dudum vetiti me laris angit amor ; 
 Nuda nee arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles : 
 
 Quam male Phoebicolis convenit ille locus ! 
 Nee duri libet usque minas perferre Magistri, 
 
 Ceteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. 
 Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates, 
 
 Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi, 
 Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemque recuso, 
 
 Lsetus et exHii conditione fruor." — Eleg. i. 11. 
 
 Now surely no one who reads these lines is justified in inferring 
 anything more than that Milton was, for some offence or other, in 
 College phrase, rusticated, i. e. ordered to quit the University for a 
 limited period. That it could not have been long is proved by his 
 having taken his degree at the regular time, so he must have kept 
 all his terms. Aubrey however says, " His first tutor was Mr. 
 Chappel, from whom receiving some unkindness {he wliipt him), 
 he was afterwards . . . transferred to the tuition of one Mr. To- 
 vey." The Tory and High Church Warton and Johnson eagerly 
 catch at this note of Aubrey's, assume its truth, and assert that 
 Milton was publicly whipped previous to his rustication, and sup- 
 pose the poet to allude to it in Ceteraque ingenio non subeunda 
 meo. It must raise, we fancy, a smile in even the most sombre, 
 to find the serious Milton thus gravely telling his friend that he 
 did not much like being whipped. 
 
 But, after all, where did Aubrey get his information ? He was 
 not himself a Cambridge man, and the poet or his brother hardly 
 gave it to him. Besides, if it was a matter of notoriety, it could 
 scarcely have escaped the knowledge of Hall (?), or Dumoulin, who 
 wrote so many years earlier than Aubrey. Little stress then, we 
 apprehend, can be laid on his assertion. Even though it was the 
 
MILTON AND THE EGERTON FAMILY. 119 
 
 custom to use the rod in those times at Oxford and Cambridge, 
 it was only on the younger students that it was employed in ge- 
 neral ; and that by the Tutor, and not by the Master of the College, 
 and it is only of the latter that Milton speaks. It is unfortunate 
 that the author has not dated his two elegies to Diodati ; but from 
 the tone of this elegy, his speaking of his frequenting the theatres 
 and Gray's Inn Walks, and admiring the beauties he saw there, 
 and fearing the loss of his heart, we may perhaps infer, that when 
 he wrote it he had been two or three years at the University, so 
 that he was quite beyond the whipping age. The whole story is, 
 we are convinced, a baseless fiction. 
 
 Milton, we know, had a thorough contempt for the course of 
 studies pursued at the Universities. To this he may have given 
 expression in various ways ; and by this and some acts of insub- 
 ordination he may have drawn on himself the indignation of Dr. 
 Bainbridge, the Master, who is said to have been a strict discipli- 
 narian, and who was probably a narrow-minded pedant. For this 
 he was ordered to leave the University for a short time ; and the 
 period was, in all probability, a very brief one, for it appears to 
 have been in the spring — an active season at College — that he 
 wrote this elegy, and he speaks in it of returning shortly to the 
 banks of Cam. 
 
 Note D. 
 milton and the e&ekton family. 
 
 The Arcades was represented before the Countess Dowager of 
 Derby, at Harefield House, near Uxbridge, and Comus before her 
 son-in-law the Earl of Bridgewater, at Ludlow Castle, in Shrop- 
 shire. How Milton happened to be the writer of them we will 
 attempt to explain when we come to the consideration of these 
 poems in the sequel of our work ; in this Note it is our object 
 to show the utter instability of the structure of adulation and 
 sycophancy toward the descendants of those noble persons which 
 Warton and Todd have conspired to raise. 
 
 Alice, the sixth daughter of Sir John Spenser of Althorpe, had 
 been, under the name of Amaryllis, the theme of the verse of her 
 real or supposed kinsman, the poet of the Faerie Queene, in his 
 ' Colin Clout's come home again ;' and he had dedicated to her 
 his Tears of the Muses. She married Ferdinando Lord Strange, 
 
120 NOTES. 
 
 who, on tlie death of his father in 1594, became Earl of Derby, 
 but who died in the following year. In 1600 she married the 
 Lord Keeper, afterwards Lord Chancellor Egerton, a widower. 
 He died in 1617, leaving her again a widow. She seems to have 
 spent the remainder of her days at Harefield House, where she 
 died on the 20th of January, 1635-6. The Earl of Bridgewater, 
 the Lord Chancellor's eldest son, had married one of her daugh- 
 ters by Lord Strange. 
 
 It is the theory of Warton that this noble lady, who in her 
 younger days had been the patroness of Spenser, admiring the 
 poetic talents of her young neighbour at Horton, took him under 
 her patronage, and that in consequence Milton was a frequent 
 visitor at Harefield, where of course he became acquainted with 
 Lord Bridgewater and his family. When therefore the entertain- 
 ment of Arcades was projected at Harefield, Milton, to show his 
 gratitude to the Countess, supplied the poetry ; and when the suc- 
 cess of that piece had emboldened the young Egertons to project 
 an entertainment on a grander scale, to celebrate their father's 
 entrance on his office of Lord President of Wales, the Muse of 
 Horton gladly and gratefully once more exerted her powers in 
 the service of her noble patrons, and Comus was the magnificent 
 result. 
 
 Now we may observe, in opposition to this fine theory, that Mil- 
 ton at this time was almost totally unknown to fame as a poet. 
 His poetic efforts had been nearly all in Latin, and their renown 
 had hardly gone beyond the walls of Cambridge, for he had never 
 printed a line. It may however be said, that his friend Henry 
 Lawes, the musician, who was in the service, as it was termed, of 
 the family, may have magnified his talents in the ears of the 
 Countess, and thus have directed her patronage toward the young 
 poet, who accepted it with gratitude. But this will appear a most 
 improbable supposition when we consider the character and posi- 
 tion of Milton. Descended from an ancient and honourable 
 family, of a noble and independent spirit, conscious of possessing 
 the highest powers given unto man by God, and in worldly cir- 
 cumstances which placed him, if not in affluence, far above want, 
 he could ill have brooked the tone of superiority assumed, often 
 unconsciously, by the possessors of worldly wealth and titles over 
 those who, however superior in other respects, are destitute of 
 these advantages. All through his life he seems to have had be- 
 
MILTON AND THE EGERTON FAMILY. 121 
 
 fore his eyes the beautiful example of the worthy woman of Shu- 
 nem, who, when the prophet, in return for her kindness, offered to 
 exert his influence in her favour with the King or his officers, re- 
 plied, " I dwell among mine own people." At no period did he 
 seek the society and intimacy of those who were great in the 
 world's regard ; his delight was in friends of his own rank in life, 
 like-minded with himself, like him devoted to the pursuits of lite- 
 rature and science: these alone he sought, and with these he was 
 contented. At this very time he was personally unacquainted 
 even with the learned and accomplished Sir Henry "Wootton, who 
 lived at Eton, some miles nearer to him than Harefield. Further, 
 when we consider the manners of the time in which the nobility 
 kept up so much pomp and state in their abodes, and in their in- 
 tercourse with their inferiors in rank, the supposition becomes 
 still more incredible. It was not till the eighteenth century that 
 men of genius began to visit at the houses of the aristocracy on 
 somewhat of a footing of equality; and had Milton frequented 
 Harefield House, it must have been in the character of a depen- 
 dant, or one in its service, as the phrase was. 
 
 Todd, without naming any authority, tells us that Milton " had 
 lived in the neighbourhood of Ashridge, the seat of the Earl of 
 Bridgewater," adding from Warton, " for his father's house and 
 lands at Horton, near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire, were held 
 under the Earl, before whom Comus was acted." It is really very 
 provoking that people will write in such a loose and careless man- 
 ner. Any one who reads this passage will, if not aware of the 
 truth, naturally infer that Ashridge also is near Colnbrook ; 
 whereas, if Mr. Todd had iaken the trouble to look at a map, he 
 would have seen that it is near Berkhampstead in Herts, and little 
 less than twenty miles from Colnbrook. 
 
 This is bad enough, but what follows is worse. Todd goes on 
 to tells us, chiefly on his own authority it would seem, that " Mil- 
 ton afterwards lived in Barbican, where the Earl had great pro- 
 perty, as well as his town residence Bridgewater House; and 
 though Dr. Johnson observes that Milton had taken a larger house 
 in Barbican for the reception of scholars, it is not improbable that 
 he may have been accommodated with it rent-free by that noble- 
 man, who, it may be supposed, would gladly embrace an oppor- 
 tunity of having in his neighbourhood the admirable author of 
 Comus, and of promoting his acquaintance with that finished 
 
122 NOTES. 
 
 scholar, who, being willing, says his nephew Phillips, to impart his 
 learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentle- 
 men who were his intimate friends, might afford to his family at 
 least the pleasure of his conversation, if not to some of them the 
 advantages of his instruction." 
 
 No doubt the Archdeacon of Cleveland thought this a piece of 
 very pretty writing, and very gratifying to the representatives of 
 the Earl of Bridgewater. But, unfortunately for him, it is as much 
 at variance with chronology as his preceding one was with topo- 
 graphy. It was in 1645 or 1646 that Milton took his house in 
 Barbican; and as the inscription on Lord Bridgewater' s monument 
 tells us that " he was a loyal subject to his sovereign in those worst 
 of times when it was accounted treason not to be a traitor," it is 
 hardly possible that he was living quietly within the enemy's quar- 
 ters, and exhibiting a rather unusual kind of generosity to one of 
 the most determined foes of the cause of his Eoyal master, and 
 of the Church, to which the said Earl was '' a dutiful son in her 
 persecution, as well as in her great splendour."* 
 
 There remains one more piece of this Egerton idolatry. In a 
 note on the epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, Warton, 
 after telling us that she was of a Cheshire family, adds that " it is 
 natural to suppose that it was well acquainted with the family of 
 Lord Bridgewater belonging to the same county. It is therefore," 
 he continues, " not improbable that Milton wrote this elegy, an- 
 other poetical favour, in consequence of his acquaintance with the 
 Egerton family." Of this supposition we will show the absolute 
 impossibility when we come to treat of that elegy. 
 
 The materials of this note will be found in Todd's Introduction 
 to Comus. 
 
 Note E. 
 
 PASSAGES IN Milton's writings eelating to his eiest wife. 
 
 " Not that license and levity and unconsented breach of faith, 
 
 * Speaking of the applause which Milton received for his Defensio, Todd 
 adds (i. 80) in a note : " He perhaps lost the friendship of others on tliis oc- 
 casion. Certain it seems that th6 amiable and learned Earl of Bridgewater, 
 who had performed the part of the First Brother in his Comus, then disdained 
 his acquaintance. On the title-page of the Defensio, now in Lord Francis 
 Egerton' s possession, that nobleman has written : Liher igne, author furca 
 dignissimV^ He lost what he probably never had possessed. 
 
PASSAGES RELATING TO HIS WIFE. 123 
 
 should herein be countenanced, but that some conscionable and 
 tender pity might be had of those who have unwarily, in a thing 
 they never practised before, made themselves the bondmen of a 
 luckless and helpless matrimony." — Doctrine and Discipline of 
 Divorce. 
 
 " And what greater nakedness or unfitness of mind than that 
 which hinders even the solaces and peaceful society of the married 
 couple ? And what hinders that more than the unfitness and de- 
 fectiveness of an unconjugal mind ?" — Ibid. 
 
 ^ " For in single life, the absence and remoteness of a helper 
 might inure him to expect his own comforts out of himself, or 
 to seek with hope ; but here the continual sight of his deluded 
 thoughts, without cure, must needs be to him, if especially his 
 complexion incline him to melancholy, a daily trouble and pain of 
 loss, in some degree like that which reprobates feel." — Ibid. 
 
 " But some are ready to object, that the disposition ought seri- 
 ously to be considered before. But let them know again, that for 
 all the wariness that can be used, it may yet befall a discreet man 
 to be mistaken in his choice ; and we have plenty of examples. 
 The soberest and best-governed men are least practised in these 
 affairs ; and who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin, 
 may ofttimes hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is 
 really unfit for conversation ? Nor is there that freedom of ac- 
 cess granted, or presumed, as may suffice to a perfect discerning, 
 till too late ; and where any indisposition is suspected, what more 
 usual than the persuasion of friends that acquaintance, as it in- 
 creases, will amend all ? And lastly, it is not strange, though 
 many who have spent their youth chastely are in some things not 
 so quick-sighted, while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial 
 torch. Nor is it therefore for a modest error that a man should 
 forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means to release 
 him ; since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of their 
 bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because 
 their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many 
 divorces to teach them experience. "Whereas the sober man, 
 honouring the appearance of modesty, and hoping well of every 
 social virtue under that veil, may easily chance to meet, if not with 
 a body impenetrable, yet, often with a mind to all other due con- 
 versation inaccessible, and to all the more estimable and superior 
 purposes of matrimony useless and almost lifeless; and what a 
 
124 NOTES. 
 
 solace, what a fit help such a consort would be through the whole 
 life of a man, is less pain to conjecture than to have experience." 
 —Ihid. 
 
 " And yet there follows upon this a worse temptation. For if 
 he be such as hatb spent his youth unblamably, and laid up his 
 chiefest earthly comforts in the enjoyment of a contented marriage, 
 nor did neglect the furtherance which was to be obtained therein 
 by constant prayers, when he shall find himself bound fast to an 
 uncomplying discord of nature, or, as it oft happens, to an image 
 of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of 
 a sweet and gladsome society ; and sees withal that his bondage 
 is now inevitable : though he be almost the strongest Christian, 
 he will be ready to despair in virtue, and mutiny against Divine 
 Providence . ' ' — Ihid. 
 
 The following passages of Paradise Lost, written many years 
 after her death, evidently relate to his first wife : — 
 
 " Being as I am, why didst not thou, the head, 
 
 Command me absolutely not to go. 
 
 Going into such danger, as thou saidest ? 
 
 Too facile then, thou didst not much gainsay ; 
 
 Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss. 
 
 Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent. 
 
 Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me." 
 
 Par. Lost, ix. 1155. 
 " Tor either 
 
 He never shall find out fit mate, but such 
 
 As some misfortune brings him, or mistake ; 
 
 Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain 
 
 Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained 
 
 By a far worse ; or if she love, withheld 
 
 By parents ; or his happiest choice too late 
 
 Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound 
 
 To a fell adversary, his hate or shame : 
 
 Which infinite calamity shall cause 
 
 To human life, and household peace confound." — Ibid, x.898. 
 " She ended weeping, and her lowly plight. 
 
 Immovable till peace obtained from fault 
 
 Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought 
 
 Commiseration. Soon his heart relented 
 
PASSAGES RELATING TO HIS WIFE. 125 
 
 Toward her, his life so late and sole delight, 
 
 Now at his feet submissive, in distress ; 
 
 Creature so fair, his reconcilement seeking. 
 
 His counsels, whom she had displeased, his aid. 
 
 As one disarmed, his anger all he lost." — Ibid. x. 937. 
 
 Still later, when far advanced in life, and after having been in 
 the enjoyment of the society of two most amiable and affectionate 
 wives, the pains caused him by Mary Powell, — his memory perhaps 
 being quickened by the unduteous conduct of her daughter Mary, 
 — seem to have recurred strongly to his mind. She is evidently 
 the Dalila of his Samson Agonistes, and the following passages 
 of that poem seem to refer especially to his domestic troubles : — 
 
 " Out, out, hysena ! these are thy wonted arts, 
 And arts of every woman false like thee. 
 To break all faith, all vows, deceive, betray. 
 Then as repentant to submit, beseech. 
 And reconcilement move with feigned remorse, 
 Confess and promise worders in her change ; 
 Not truly penitent, but chief to try 
 Her husband, how far urged his patience bears. 
 His virtue or weakness which way to assail ; 
 Then with more caution and instructed skill 
 Again transgresses and again submits ; 
 That wisest and best men full oft beguiled, 
 "With goodness principled not to reject 
 The penitent, but ever to forgive. 
 Are drawn to wear out miserable days, 
 Entangled with a poisonous bosom-snake." — V. 748. 
 
 " Chor. Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, 
 After offence returning, to regain 
 Love once possessed, nor can be easily 
 Bepulsed, without much inward passion felt 
 And surest sting of amorous remorse. 
 Sams. Love's quarrels oft in pleasing concord end ; 
 
 Not wedlock-treachery, endangering life. 
 Chor. It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, 
 
 Strength, comeliness of shape or amplest merit, 
 That woman's love can win, or long inherit ; 
 
126 NOTES. 
 
 But what it is, hard is to say, 
 
 Harder to hit 
 
 "Which way soever men refer it." — F, 1003. 
 
 "Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best 
 
 Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil. 
 
 Soft, modest, meek, demure, 
 
 Once joined the contrary she proves, a thorn 
 
 Intestine, far within defensive arms 
 
 A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue 
 
 Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms 
 
 Draws him away enslaved 
 
 With dotage, and his sense depraved 
 
 To folly and shameful deeds, which ruin ends." — V. 1034. 
 
 Note !P. 
 
 milton and the powells. 
 
 In the year 1826 the researches of the indefatigable Mr. Lemon 
 brought to light from among the Royalist-Composition Papers in 
 the State- Paper Office a number of documents relating to the 
 aff"airs of Mr. Powell, Milton's father-in-law. The curious will 
 find them in extenso in Todd's Life of Milton ; here we will give 
 those relating more especially to Milton's connection with the 
 Powell family. 
 
 Milton's Petition. 
 
 To the Honourable the Commissioners for Sequestration at 
 Haberdashers' Hall, the Petition of John Milton 
 Sheweth, 
 
 That he, being to compound by the late Act for certain lands of 
 Whately, in Oxfordshire, belonging to Mr. Eichard Powell, late of 
 Porest Hill in the same county, by reason of an extent which he 
 hath upon the same lands by a statute, did put in his petition about 
 the middle of August last, which was referred accordingly ; but hav- 
 ing had important business ever since, by order of the Council of 
 State, he hath had no time to proceed in the perfecting of his com- 
 position ; and in the meantime finds that order hath been given 
 out from hence to forbid his tenants to pay him rent. He there- 
 fore now desires he may have all convenient dispatch, and that the 
 Order of Sequestring may be recalled, and that the composition 
 
MILTON AND THE POWELLS. 127 
 
 may be moderated as much as may be in regard that Mrs. Powell, 
 the widow of the said Mr. Eichard Powell, hath her cause depend- 
 ing before the Commissioners in the Painted Chamber, for breach 
 of Articles, who have adjudged her satisfaction to be made for the 
 great damage done her by seizing and selling the personal estate 
 divers days after the Articles were sealed. But by reason of the 
 expiring of that Court she hath received as yet no satisfaction, 
 and beside she hath her thirds out of that land, which was not con- 
 sidered when her husband followed his composition ; and lastly, 
 the taxes, free quartering, and finding of arms were not then con- 
 sidered, which have been since very great and are likely to be 
 greater. 
 
 And your petitioner shall be ready to pay what shall be thought 
 reasonable at any day that shall be appointed. 
 
 {Signed) John Milto:n-.* 
 
 25 Feb. 1650. 
 
 A Particular of the lands, late Eichard Powell's, of Forest Hill, 
 in the county of Oxford, now under extent, and for which John 
 Milton, Esq., desireth to compound : — 
 The said Eichard Powell was seised in his de- 1 
 
 mesne as of fee of the tithe-corn of "Whately I 60 
 
 and certain cottages ther of the clear yearly f per annum. 
 
 value of J 
 
 The said Eichard was seised also in his demesne 1 on n n 
 
 as of fee of three yards ^ of land arable and ; 
 
 pasture of the clear yearly value of J " 
 
 Out of which he craveth to be allowed for the 
 
 thirds which he payeth to Mrs. Anne Powell, 
 
 the relict of the said Eichard Powell, for her 
 
 dower 
 And also craveth that his just debt of three ^ 
 
 hundred pounds, as he hath deposed, may be ) 300 
 
 allowed upon his composition ) 
 
 John Milton. 
 
 * In the margin of this document there is in Milton's own handwriting as 
 follows (of which a fac-simile will be found in Todd) : " I doe (am ready toe 
 erased) swear that this debt for which I am to compound, according to my pe- 
 tition, is a true and real debt, as will appear upon record. 
 
 " John Milton. 
 
 " Jur. 25 Feb. 1650 [in another hand]." 
 
 26 13 4 
 
128 NOTES. 
 
 Whereas, Eichard Powell, of Forest Hill, in the county of Ox- 
 ford, G-ent., and William Hearne, late citizen and goldsmith of 
 London, deceased, by their writing or recognizance of the nature 
 of a statute-staple, bearing date the eleventh day of June, which 
 was in the third year of the reign of the late King Charles of Eng- 
 land, etc., made and provided for the recovery of debts, and taken, 
 acknowledged, and sealed, before Sir Nicholas Hide, Knight, then 
 Lord Chief Justice -of the Court, then called the King's Bench 
 at Westminster, did acknowledge themselves to owe unto JoH]!f 
 Milton, then of the University of Cambridge, Gent., son of John 
 Milton, citizen and scrivener of London, the sum of £500 of law- 
 ful money of England, which said statute or recognizance is, by a 
 writing bearing even date therewith, defeasanced* for the payment 
 of £312 of like money unto John Milton the son, his executors, 
 administrators, or assigns, on the 12th day of December then next 
 ensuing, as by the said statute or recognizance and defeasance 
 thereupon, whereunto relation being had moro at large may appear. 
 Now I, John Milton, the son (being one and the said party before 
 mentioned for Cognizee, in the said statute or recognizance) do 
 make oath that, since the extending of the said statute, I have re- 
 ceived at several times in part of satisfaction of my said just and 
 principal debt, with damages for the same, and my costs of suit, 
 the sum of one hundred and fourscore pounds, or thereabouts, 
 and that there is yet remaining due and owing to me of my said 
 principal money, interest, and costs of suit, £300 or thereabouts. 
 And I do further make oath that neither I, the said John Milton, 
 or any other for me, or by my direction, privity, or consent, have 
 or hath released, or otherwise discharged the said statute or recog- 
 nizance ; neither do I know or conceive any reason or cause, either 
 in law or equity, why I should not receive the said remainder of 
 my said debt, damages, and cost of suit. 
 
 {Signed) John Milton, [ ^^f ^^^^"^ ^^^^^ 
 ^ ^ ^ ' I 28° Eeb. 1650. 
 
 {Signed) E. Winslow. 
 Indorsed, " Milton, John, Esq., 4« Mar. 1650." 
 Pine £130. 
 
 * The meaning of this is, that by a counter-deed, named a defeasance, they 
 would, on payment of the smaller sum named in the latter, be exonerated from 
 the payment of the larger one named in the deed called a statute-staple. 
 
MILTON AND THE POWELLS. 129 
 
 Mrs. FowelVs Fetition, 
 
 To the Hon^^^ Commissioners for Composition, etc., the humble 
 Petition of Anne Powell, widow, etc., 
 Sheweth, 
 
 That your petitioner brought a considerable portion to her said 
 husband, which was worth to him £3000, yet through the careless- 
 ness of her friends, and relying upon her husband*s goodwill there- 
 in, he having had many losses in his estate by reason of the wars 
 and otherwise, your petitioner had no jointure made unto her, nor 
 hath anything at all left her but her thirds, which is due by law, 
 for the maintenance of herself and eight children, having sustained 
 £1000 in their personal estate's loss by the Committees in the 
 county, contrary to the Articles of Oxon. She most humbly prays 
 your Honours will please, being the fine is now agreed to be paid 
 by Me. Milto:s^ for the said estate, that she may continue the en- 
 joyment of her thirds as formerly, which she humbly conceives, 
 had not the fine been paid as aforesaid, yet your Honours would 
 not have abridged your petitioner of her thirds in this case, for the 
 maintenance of herself and poor children. 
 
 And she shall pray, etc., 
 
 {Signed) AifNE Powell. 
 
 19° April, 1651. 
 
 The pet"^ left to the law. 
 
 On this petition the following notes are made : — 
 " By the law she might recover her thirds without doubt, but 
 she is so extreme poor she hath not wherewithal! to prosecute ; 
 and besides Mr. Milton is a harsh and choleric man, and married 
 Mrs. Powell's daughter, who would be undone if any such course 
 were taken against him by Mrs. Powell, he having turned away 
 his wife heretofore for a long space upon some other occasion \a 
 small occasion effaced]." 
 
 This note ensuing Mr. Milton wrote, whereof this is a copy : — 
 
 Although I have compounded for my extent, and shall be so 
 
 much the longer in receiving my debt, yet at the request of Mrs. 
 
 Powell, in regard of her present necessities, I am contented, as far 
 
 as belongs to my consent, to allow her the 3rds of what I receive 
 
 K 
 
130 NOTES. 
 
 from that estate, if the Coma's shall so order it that what I allow 
 her may not be reckoned upon my account. 
 
 (^Indorsed) — The estate is wJiolly extended, and a saving as to the 
 Srd grayed, hut not granted. We cannot there- 
 fore allow the Srd to the petitioner. 
 
 In another petition, in the following July, Mrs. Powell prays 
 that as Mr. Milton will not pay her her third without the order 
 of the Commissioners, that such order may be made " for the pay- 
 ment of her said third, and the arrears thereof, to preserve her 
 and her children from starving." 
 
 Petition of Mrs. Fowell. 
 
 To the Hon^i^ etc. etc., 
 Sheweth, 
 
 That your petitioner's late husband was comprised in the Arti- 
 cles of Oxford, as appears by the certificate of the late Lord 
 General i'airfax, already before this Court in your pef^ behalf: 
 that within the time Kmited by the said Articles, your petitioner's 
 said husband preferred his petition at Groldsmiths' Hall, and was 
 admitted to compound according to the said Articles, for hi^ estate 
 real and personal, as may appear by the certificate of the Com" 
 for compounding, already likewise before this Honourable Court : 
 that her said husband died seised of an estate in fee, lying in 
 Wheatley, in the county of Oxoii, whereof your pet*' claimeth her 
 dower, which upon her said husband's death was assigned to her 
 by the heir of her said husband, and accordingly was enjoyed for 
 some time by your pef: that JoHif Milton, Esq., did extend 
 the said lands in fee, by virtue of a statute to him acknowledged 
 by your pet" said husband, before the late wars, but long after 
 your pet" marriage to her said husband. The said John Milton, 
 by virtue of an Act of Parliament, 1""" August, 1650, was required 
 to bring in a Particular of the lands so extended by him to the 
 Com" for compounding, and accordingly did pay the composition 
 due for the said lands ; and your pet' offered also to compound 
 for her dower, but could neither be admitted to compound for her 
 said dower, nor obtain an order from the said Com" to receive it 
 without a composition ; so that for nigh these two years she hath 
 been and still is debarred of her dower, which is most justly due 
 unto her. Your pet'' humbly prayeth, that she may be forthwith 
 
PORTRAITS OF MILTON. 131 
 
 restored to her dower, most wrongfully detained from her : that 
 your Honours will seriously consider this, and those other great 
 pressures (represented in a former petition, now depending before 
 you), under which your pet', being a mother of seven fatherless 
 children, — since one of them,. Capt. William Powell, Capt.-Lieut. 
 to Lieut.- Gen. Monk, was some few days past slain in Scotland, 
 in the service of Parliament, — hath for a long time groaned, by 
 the 'most injurious violation of her Articles : and that you will 
 speedily proceed to give her such relief in this and her other 
 grievances by her Articles, and otherwise in justice she makes suit 
 
 to have. 
 
 And your pet' shall ever pray, etc., 
 
 (Signed) Anne Powell. 
 {Signed) Teacet Patinceeote, Eeg'". 
 
 Note G. 
 foeteaits of milton. 
 
 Mr. Todd enters at great length into this subject in a note, in 
 his Life of Milton. The following are the most important par- 
 ticulars which it contains. 
 
 Milton's portrait was painted in 1618, when he was a boy of 
 ten years of age, by Cornelius Jansen. It is a half-length, with a 
 lace ruif. It belonged to Milton's widow, and, after her death, 
 was purchased by Mr. Charles Stanhope, for twenty guineas ; at 
 whose death, in 1760, it was purchased by Mr. Thomas Hollis, for 
 thirty-one guineas ; who, on Lord Harrington's expressing a 
 wish to have it returned, replied, that " his Lordship's whole 
 estate should not repurchase it ;" and when his lodgings in Co- 
 vent Garden took fire, he walked calmly out of the house with 
 this picture in his hand, bestowing no thought on anything else. 
 At the close of the last century it was supposed to be in the pos- 
 session of Mr. Brand Hollis. It was engraved by J. B. Cipriani 
 in 1760, and may be seen in Hollis' s Memoirs. 
 
 There is another portrait, which had belonged to Milton's 
 widow, in the possession of the Onslow family, but which is sus- 
 pected by some not to be a portrait of Milton. Yertue, who en- 
 graved it in 1723, said the age it represented was twenty-one. It 
 was also engraved by Houbraken and by Cipriani. The proba- 
 bility seems to be that it is not genuine. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 NOTES. 
 
 To the edition of the Poems in 1645 was prefixed a portrait by 
 Marshall, under which the poet caused to be engraved some Grreek 
 lines expressive of his opinion of its utter faithlessness. In fact, 
 as Mr. Mitford observes, it transforms Milton, who was then only 
 thirty-six, and who always looked younger than he was, " into a 
 puritanical gentleman of fifty." There is a circumstance in this 
 for which we cannot account. Though we are to suppose that it 
 was drawn in 1645, it says, anno cetatis vigesimo primo. 
 
 In 1670, prefixed to Milton's History of Britain was a portrait 
 engraved by Faithorn, from a crayon-drawing by himself, with this 
 legend, " Gul. Faithorn ad vivum delin. et sculpsit. Johannis 
 Miltoni effigies, ^tat. 62. 1670." This engraving has been often 
 copied,* but as it was not in Faithorn's best manner, a new copy 
 was made for the first edition of Todd's Milton, from the original 
 crayon-drawing in the possession of William Baker, Esq. This 
 drawing had passed through the hands of the Eichardsons and 
 Tonsons to those of Mr. Baker. It was at the sight of this, when 
 shown to her by Yertue the engraver, among other paintings and 
 engravings, that Deborah Clarke made the exclamation above re- 
 lated. All the best portraits of Milton are taken from it. 
 
 There is said to have been a cast in plaster, of Milton, executed 
 when he was about fifty, by one Pierce, who did the marble bust 
 of Sir Christopher Wren in the Bodleian Library, or by Abraham 
 Simon. It belonged to Yertue, from whom it was bought by Mr. 
 HoUis. The busts prefixed to Miltonjs Prose Works by Birch, 
 1738, and by Bacon, 1753, were engraved by Yertue from a bad 
 drawing made from this cast by J. Eichardson. 
 
 In 1784, Sir Joshua Eeynolds gave one hundred guineas for a 
 miniature, said to be that of Milton. The portrait is dressed in 
 black, and the painter's mark and date are " S. C, 1653." On the 
 back was written, " This picture belonged to Deborah Milton, who 
 was her father's amanuensis ; at her death, was sold to Sir W. 
 Davenant's family. It was painted by Mr. Samuel Cooper, who 
 was painter to Oliver Cromwell, at the time Milton was Latin 
 Secretary to the Protector. The painter and poet Avere near of 
 the same age : Milton was born in 1608, and died in 1674 ; and 
 Cooper was born in 1609, and died in 1672 ; and were companions 
 and friends till death parted them. Several encouragers and lovers 
 of the fine arts at that time wanted this picture, particularly Lord 
 * There is one by Cipriani in Hollis's Memoirs. 
 
FICTIONS RESPECTING MILTON. 133 
 
 Dorset, Lord Somers, esquire (sic), Sir Robert Howard, Dry den, 
 Atterbury, Dr. AJdrich, and Sir John Denbam." 
 
 This portrait — an engraving from which may be seen in Eohn's 
 edition of Milton's Prose Works — is totally unlike all other por- 
 traits of Milton. " I have now," says Sir Joshua, and well he 
 might, " a different idea of the countenance of Milton, which can- 
 not be got from any of the other pictures that I have seen." In 
 fact, let any one look at the portrait (however unlike) done by 
 Marshall when Milton was thirty-six, and this by Cooper when he 
 was forty-two, and say is it possible they could ever have been 
 taken from the same original. Could Deborah Clarke have ever 
 supposed that this and Eaithorn's drawing could both have been 
 intended for her father ? As this miniature is said strongly to re- 
 semble Vandyke's picture of John Selden, many suppose it was 
 done for him by Cooper.* Sir Joshua however died in the belief 
 that it was Milton, for in his will he left 2%<3 miniatv/re of Milton, 
 hy Qooper, to the Bev. "William Mason. 
 
 Note H. 
 
 nCTIONS RESPECTITfG MILTON. 
 
 The following evident sport of imagination appeared in some 
 newspaper toward the end of the last centuryt : — 
 
 " Believing that the following real circumstance has been but 
 little noticed, we submit the particulars of it as not uninteresting, 
 to the attention of our readers. 
 
 " It is well known that in the bloom of youth, and when he pur- 
 sued his studies at Cambridge, this poet was extremely beautiful. 
 Wandering one day, during the summer, far beyond the precincts 
 of the University into the country, he became so heated and 
 fatigued that, reclining himself at the foot of a tree to rest, he 
 shortly fell asleep. Before he awoke, two ladies, who were fo- 
 reigners, passed by in a carriage. Agreeably astonished at the love- 
 liness of his appearance, they alighted, and having admired him, 
 as they thought unperceived, for some time, the youngest, who was 
 very handsome, drew a pencil from her pocket, and having written 
 some lines upon a piece of paper, put it with her trembling hand 
 into his own. Immediately afterwards they proceeded on their jour- 
 
 * But as Selden died in 1654, aged seventy, how is this possible ? 
 t See Todd's Milton, i. p. 19. 
 
134 NOTES. 
 
 nej. Some of his acquaintances, who were in search of him, had 
 observed this silent adventure, but at too great a distance to dis- 
 cover that the highly favoured party in it was our illustrious bard. 
 Approaching nearer, they saw their friend, to whom, being awak- 
 ened, they mentioned what had happened. Milton opened the 
 paper, and with surprise read these verses from Guarini : — 
 
 Occhi, stelle mortali, 
 Ministri de' miei mali ! 
 Se ciiiusi m' uccidite, 
 Aperti che fiarete ? 
 
 Eager from this moment to find out the fair incognita, Milton 
 travelled, but in vain, through every part of Italy. His poetic 
 fervour became incessantly more and more heated by the idea 
 which he had formed of his unknown admirer ; and it is in some 
 degree to her that his own times, the present times, and the latest 
 posterity must feel themselves indebted for several of the most 
 impassioned and charming compositions of the Paradise Lost." 
 
 Eemarks on this palpable fiction would be superfluous. As a 
 pendent to it we give the following day-dream, as it has justly 
 been termed, of the amiable, the learned, the ingenious, but not 
 profound. Sir William Jones : — 
 
 " The necessary trouble of correcting the first printed sheets of 
 my history prevented me today from paying a proper respect to 
 the memory of Shakspeare, by attending his jubilee. But I was 
 resolved to do all the honour in my power to as great a poet ; and 
 set out in the morning in company with a friend to visit a place 
 where Milton spent some part of his life, and where, in all pro- 
 hahility, he composed several of his earliest productions. It is a 
 small village on a pleasant hiU, about three miles from Oxford, 
 called Porest Hill, because it formerly lay contiguous to a forest, 
 which has since been cut down. The poet chose this place of re- 
 tirement after his first marriage, and he describes the beauties of 
 his retreat in that fine passage of his L'AUegro : — 
 
 Sometime walking, not unseen, 
 
 By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, etc. 
 
 " It was neither the proper season of the year, nor time of the 
 day, to hear all the rural sounds, and see all the objects mentioned 
 in this description ; but, by a pleasing concurrence of circum- 
 stances, we were saluted, on our approach to the village, with the 
 
FICTIONS RESPECTING MILTON. 135 
 
 musick of the mower and his scythe ; we saw the ploughman in- 
 tent upon his labour, and the milkmaid returning from her country- 
 employment. 
 
 "As we ascended the hill, the variety of beautiful objects, the 
 agreeable stillness and natural simplicity of the whole scene, gave 
 us the highest pleasure. We at length reached the spot whence 
 Milton undoubtedly took most of his images; it is on the top of the 
 hill, from which there is a most extensive prospect on all sides : 
 the distant mountains that seemed to support the clouds, the vil- 
 lages and turrets, partly shaded with trees of the finest verdure, 
 and partly raised above the groves that surrounded them, the dark 
 plains and meadows of a greyish colour, where the sheep were 
 feeding at large ; in short, the view of the streams and rivers con- 
 vinced us that there was not a single useless or idle word in the 
 above-mentioned description, but that it was a most exact and 
 lively representation of nature. Thus will this fine passage, which 
 has always been admired for its elegance, receive an additional 
 beauty from its exactness. After we had walked, with a kind of 
 poetical enthusiasm, over this enchanted ground, we returned to 
 the village. 
 
 " The poet's house was close to the church ; the greatest part of 
 it has been pulled down ; and what remains belongs to an adjacent 
 farm. I am informed that several papers in Milton's own hand 
 were found by the gentleman who was last in possession of the 
 estate. The tradition of his having lived there is current among 
 the villagers : one of them showed us a ruinous wall that made 
 part of his chambei", and I was much pleased with another who 
 had forgotten the name of Milton, but recollected him by the title 
 of The Poet. 
 
 " It must not be omitted, that the groves near this village are 
 famous for nightingales, which are so elegantly described in the 
 Penseroso. Most of the cottage windows are overgrown with 
 sweet-briars, vines, and honeysuckles ; and, that Milton's habita- 
 tion had the same rustic ornament, we may conclude from his 
 description of the lark bidding him good-morrow, 
 
 Through the sweet-briar or the vme 
 Or the twisted eglantine ; 
 
 for it is evident that he meant a sort of honeysuckle by the eg- 
 lantine ; though that word is commonly used for the sweet-briar, 
 which he could not mention twice in the same couplet. 
 
136 NOTES. 
 
 " If ever I pass a month or six weeks at Oxford in the summer, 
 
 I shall be inclined to hire and repair this venerable mansion, and 
 to make a festival for a circle of friends, in honour of Milton, 
 the most perfect scholar, as well as the sublimest poet, that our 
 country ever produced. Such an honour will be less splendid, but 
 more sincere and respectful, than all the pomp and ceremony on 
 the banks of the Avon." 
 
 It would not be easy, we apprehend, to produce a stronger in- 
 stance than this of the self-deception that an ingenious man can 
 practise. Sir William Jones, we see, had persuaded himself that 
 Milton had "composed several of his earliest productions" at 
 Forest Hill, and of course he found proofs, and by leading ques- 
 tions he obtained such answers as he wished from some of the 
 villagers. But any one who reads vrith any care our Life of Mil- 
 ton, will see not merely the improbability, but the impossibility 
 of the whole theory. Milton never had a house at Forest Hill. 
 Whenever he was there he must have resided at Mr. Powell's, and 
 it is probable that he never made any stay there of any duration, 
 except on the occasion of his marriage ; and surely L' Allegro and 
 
 II Penseroso are not the kind of poems that a man would be likely 
 to write during the honeymoon. Besides, from the time that Mil- 
 ton engaged in theologic controversy his mind had probably taken 
 such a turn as would make such occupation seem to him at least 
 unsuitable. But we should not waste our own time or that of the 
 reader on what is so self-evidently apocryphal. 
 
 Todd gives the following anecdote from a book named Easton's 
 Human Longevity, published at Salisbur}'- in 1799, observing that 
 the same had appeared in the Wolverhampton Chronicle of March 
 31, 1790, while Mr. Hartop was still living : — 
 
 " Of his unsubdued spirit," says Mr. Todd, " the following anec- 
 dote has been related. Soon after the Eestoration he is said to 
 have borrowed £50 of Jonathan Hartop, of Aldborough, near 
 Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, who died in 1791, at the great age 
 of 138. He returned the loan with honour, though not without 
 much difficulty, as his circumstances were very low. Mr. Hartop 
 would have declined receiving it, but the pride of the poet was 
 equal to his genius, and he sent the money with an angry letter, 
 which was found among the curious possessions of that venerable 
 old man." 
 
 We may observe that Mr. Todd expresses no doubt whatever of 
 
FICTIONS RESPECTING MILTON. 137 
 
 the trutli of this anecdote. Unfortunately for his critical acumen, 
 chronology is as much against him here as topography was on a 
 former occasion ; for as Mr. Hartop died in 1791, aged 138 years, 
 he must have been bom in 1653, and so have been at most only 
 ten years old when he made the loan to Milton. 
 
 Mr. Mitford, in the Addenda to his Life of Milton, quotes the 
 following passage : — 
 
 " Mrs. Katharine Milton, wife to John Milton, Esq., was buried 
 in St. Margaret's Church in Westminster, Feb. 10, 1657. Eeg. 
 Book. Milton then lived in a new house in Petty France, when 
 Mr. Harvey, son of Dr. Harvey, of Petty France, Westminster, 
 told me, Nov. 14, 1770 (1670 ?) that old Mr. Lownde assured him 
 that when Mr. Milton buried his wife he had the coffin shut down 
 with twelve several locks that had twelve several keys, and that 
 he gave the keys to twelve several friends, and desired the coffin 
 might not be opened till they all met together. Kennett. Wood's 
 Ath. Ox. vol. ii. col. 486." This is not very like Milton; and when 
 and why was the coffin to be opened ? 
 
 Richardson states that he was informed by Sir George Hunger- 
 ford, an ancient Member of Parliament, that Sir John Denham 
 came into the House one morning with a sheet of Paradise Lost 
 wet from the press in his hand, and, being asked what it was, he 
 replied, " Part of the noblest poem that ever was printed in any 
 language or in any age." He further tells us that it remained 
 unknown till two years afterwards, when Lord Buckhurst, in com- 
 pany with a gentleman who often told the story to Bichardson's 
 informant, looking over some books in Little Britain, met with 
 Paradise Lost, and, being surprised with some passages in turning 
 it over, bought it. The bookseller requested his Lordship to speak 
 in its favour if he liked '\\i,for the hooks lay on his hands as waste 
 paper. Lord Buckhurst having read the poem, sent it to Dryden, 
 who in a short time returned it with this answer — This man cuts 
 lis all out, and the ancients too. " Much the same character," adds 
 Bichardson, " he gave of it to a north-country gentleman to whom 
 I mentioned the book, he being a great reader, but not in a right 
 train, coming to town seldom, and keeping little company. Dry- 
 den amazed him with speaking loftily of it. ' Why, Mr. Dryden,' 
 says he (Sir W. L. told me the thing himself), ' it is not in rime.' 
 ' No,' replied Dryden, ' nor would I have done my Virgil in rime, 
 if I was to begin it again.'" 
 
 On the first of these anecdotes Malone observes that there was 
 
138 NOTES. 
 
 little jDrobability of Denham's getting a proof-sheet ; lie miglit 
 however if well known at the printing-office. He then observes 
 that Denham was out of his mind the greater part of the year 
 1G67, when the poem was at press ; and finally, what is quite con- 
 clusive, that Denham never was in Parliament at all. With re- 
 spect to the second, he notices the fact that within the first two 
 years 1300 copies were sold.* We may add that Dry den was pro- 
 bably acquainted with Milton at the time, and at all events he 
 must have known that he had written Comus, which was so far 
 beyond anything that he himself or any of his contemporaries 
 had written. The last anecdote is probably true. 
 
 Note I. 
 
 MILTON'S WILIi AND PROCEEDINGS THEREON.f 
 
 " Memorandum, that John Milton, late of the parish of St. 
 Griles Cripplegate in the Countie of Middlesex Grentleman, de- 
 ceased, at severall times before his death, and in particular on or 
 about the twentieth day of July, in the year of our Lord Grod 
 1674, being of perfect mind and memorie, declared his Will and 
 intent as to the disposall of his estate after his death, in these 
 words following, or of like effect : The portion due to me from Mr. 
 Powell, my former wife's father, I leave to the unkind children I 
 had hy her, having received no parte of it : but my meaning is, they 
 shall have no other benefit of my estate than the said portion, and 
 what I have besides done for them ; they having been very undutifull 
 to me. All the residue of my estate I leave to [the] disposall of 
 Elizabeth my loving wife. Which words, or to the same effect, 
 were spoken in the presence of Cheistopher Milton. 
 
 " X [Mark of] Elizabeth Tisher. 
 
 " Nov. 23. 1674." 
 
 I. 
 
 The Allegation propounding the Will, on which Allegation the 
 Witnesses be examined. 
 
 " Negotium Testamentarium, sive probacionis Testament! nun- 
 cupativi, sive ultimse Voluntatis, Johannis Milton, nuper dum 
 
 * As the poem was first published by Peter Parker under Creed Church, 
 near Aldgate, and Robert Boulter m Fleet-street, the Little Britain bookseller 
 could have only had some of the copies he had bought at the sale, which might 
 be lying on his hands. Synunons gives credit to the anecdote. 
 
 f First published by "Warton in his edition of Milton's IVIinor Poems. ' 
 
Milton's will. 139 
 
 vixit parocliiae S. ^gidii Cripplegate London generosi, defuncti, 
 habent. etc. promotum per Elizabethan! Milton Eelictam, et Le- 
 gatariam principalem nominatam in Testamento nuncupativo, sive 
 ultima Yoluntate, dicti defuncti, contra Mariam, Annam, et De- 
 boram Miltok, filias dicti defuncti. 
 
 " Thompson. Clements. 
 
 " Secundo Andreae, a. d. 1674. Quo die ... . Thompson, 
 nomine, procuratione, ac ultimus procurator legitimus, dictae Eli- 
 zabethae Milton, omnibus melioribus et effectualioribus [efficaci- 
 oribus] via, modo, et meliori forma, necnon ad omnem juris effec- 
 tum, exhibuit Testamentum nuncupativum dicti Johannis Mil- 
 ton defuncti, sic incipiens, ' Memoeandiim, that John Milton, 
 late of the parish of S. Oiles, Cripplegate,' etc. Which words, or 
 words to the same effect, were spoken in the presence of Christo- 
 pher Milton, and Elizabeth Eisher ; et allegavit consimiliter, et 
 dicens prout sequitur. I. Quod praefatus Johannes Milton, 
 dum vixit, mentis compos, ac in sua sana memoria existens, . . . 
 Testamentum suum nuncupativum modo in hoc negotio exhibi- 
 tum . . . tenoris schedulae . . . testamentarisB condidit, nuncupa- 
 vit, et declaravit ; caeteraque omnia et singula dedit, donavit, reli- 
 quit, et disposuit, in omnibus, et per omnia, vel similiter in eflfec- 
 tum, prout in dicto Testamento nuncupative continetur, ac postea 
 mortem obiit : ac Principalis Pars ista proponit conjunctim, di- 
 visim, et de quolibet. II. Item, quod tempore conditionis, decla- 
 rationis, nuncupationis Testamenti, in hoc negotio exhibiti, praefa- 
 tus Johannes Milton perfecta fruebatur memoria ; ac proponit 
 ut supra." 
 
 II. 
 
 Interrogatories addressed to the Witnesses examined upon 
 tlie Allegation. 
 
 " Decemb. 5. 1674. Interrogatoria ministrata et ministranda 
 ex parte Annae, Mariae, et Deborae Milton, testibus ex parte 
 Elizabethae Milton product is sive producendis sequuntur. 
 
 " Impriynis, Aske each witnesse, what relation to, or depen- 
 dance on, the producent, they, or either of them, have ; and to 
 which of the parties they would give the victory were it in their 
 power ? Et interrogatur quilibet testis conjunctim, et divisim, et 
 (le quolibet. 
 
 "2. Item, Aske each witnesse, what day, and what time of the 
 
140 NOTES. 
 
 day, tlie Will nuncupative was declared ; what positive words did 
 the deceased use in the declaring thereof? Can you positively 
 swear, that the deceased did declare that hee did leave the residue 
 of his estate to the disposal! of his wife, or did hee not say, ' I 
 will leave the residue of my estate to my wife' ? Et fiat ut 
 sv^ra. 
 
 " 3. Item^ Upon what occasion did the deceased declare the 
 said Will ? Was not the deceased in perfect health at the same 
 time ? Doe you not think, that the deceased, if he declared any 
 such Will, declared it in a present passion, or some angry humour 
 against some or one of his children by his former [first] wife ? Mt 
 fiat ut supra. 
 
 " 4. Item, Aske each witnesse, whether the parties ministrant 
 were not and are not greate frequenters of the Church, and good 
 livers ;* and what cause of displeasure had deceased against them ? 
 Etfiat ut supra. 
 
 " 5. Item, Aske Mr. [Christopher] Miltoi^", and each other wit- 
 nesse, whether the deceased's Will, if any such was made, was not, 
 that the deceased's wife should have £1000, and the children of 
 the said Christopher Milton the residue ; and whether she hath 
 not promised him that they should have it, if shee prevailed in 
 this Cause ? Whether the said Mr. Milton hath not since the 
 deceased's death confessed soe much, or some part thereof? JEt 
 fiat ut supra. 
 
 " 6. Item, Aske each witnesse, whether what is left to the mi- 
 nistrants by the said Will is not reputed a very bad or altogether 
 desperate debt ? Etfiat ut supra. 
 
 " 7. Aske the said Mr. Milton, whether he did not gett the 
 said Will drawn upp, and inform the writer to what effect he should 
 draw it ? And did he not enquire of the other witnesses, what they 
 would or could depose ? And whether he hath not solicited this 
 Cause, and pay'd fees to the Proctour about it ? Etfiat ut sufra. 
 
 " 8. Item, Aske each witnesse, what fortune the deceased did 
 in his lifetime bestowe on the ministrants ? And whether the 
 said Anne Milton is not lame, and almost helplesse ? Etfiat ut 
 
 * The description good livers is not to be understood in its general and 
 proper sense, which could not have offended Milton ; but as arising from wliat 
 went before, and meaning much the same thing, that is, regular in their attend- 
 ance on the established worship. — Waeton. 
 
Milton's will. 141 
 
 " 9. Item, Aske each witnesse, what value is the deceased's es- 
 tate of, as neare as they can guess ? Etjiat ut supra.''^ 
 
 III. 
 
 Depositions and Gross-Examinations of the said Witnesses. 
 
 " Elizabetha Milton, Eelicta et Legataria principalis Johannis 
 Milton defuncti, contra Annam, Mariam, et Deboram Milton, 
 filias ejusdem defuncti. Super Allegatione articulata et Testa- 
 mento nuncupativo Johannis Milton defuncti, ex parte Eliza- 
 bethaB Milton predictae, in hoc negotio, secundo Andreae, 1674, 
 dato et exhibitis. 
 
 " Quinto Decembris 1674. Christopherus Milton viUae Gip- 
 wici in com. SufFolciae, ortus infra parochiam Omnium Sanctorum 
 Bredstreete, London, aetat. 58 annor. aut eo circiter, testis, etc. 
 Ad omnes articulos dictae Allegationis, et ad Testamentum nun- 
 cupativum Johannis Milton, generosi, defuncti, in hoc negotio 
 dat. et exhibit, deponit et dicit. That on or about the twentieth 
 day of July, 1674, the day certaine he now remembreth not, this 
 deponent being a practicer in the Law, and a Bencher in the 
 Inner Temple, but living in vacations at Ipswich, did usually at 
 the ende of the Terme visit John Milton, his this deponent's 
 brother the Testator articulate, deceased, before his going home ; 
 and soe at the end of Midsummer Terme last past, he this depo- 
 nent went to visit his said brother, and then found him in his 
 chamber within his owne house, situate on Bunhill, within the 
 parish of S. Giles, Crepelgate, London : And at that tyme, he 
 the said Testator, being not well, (and this deponent being then 
 going into the country,) in a serious manner, with an intent, (as 
 he believes,) that what he then spoke should be his "Will, if he 
 dyed before his this deponent's coming the next time to London, 
 declared his Will in these very words as neare as this deponent 
 cann now call to mynd, viz. Brother, the porcion due to me from 
 Mr. Powell, my former [first] imfe's father, I leave to the unkind 
 children I had hy her : but I have receaved noe part of it, and my 
 Will and meaning is, they shall have noe other benefit of my estate, 
 than the said porcion and what I have besides don for them : they 
 haveing been very umdutiful to me. And all the residue of my estate 
 Heave to the disposall of Elizabeth my loveing wife. She, the said 
 Elizabeth his the deceased's wife, and Elizabeth Eysher his the 
 deceased's then maide-servant, was [at the] same tyme goeing upp 
 
142 NOTES. 
 
 and downe the roome, but whether she then heard the said de- 
 ceased so declare his "Will as above or not, he knoweth not. 
 
 "And the said testator at the premises was of perfect mind and 
 memory, and talked and discoursed sensibly and well, et aliter 
 nescit deponere. 
 
 Che. Miltqn. 
 
 " Ad Inteeeogatokia. 
 
 " Ad 1"^ Interr. respondet, that the party producent in this cause 
 was and is the relict of the said deceased, who was his this respon- 
 dent's brother ; and the parties ministring these interrogatories 
 were, and are in repute, and soe he beleeveth, his the said de- 
 ceased's children by a former wife : and for his part, he wisheth 
 right to take place, and soe would give it if in his power ; and 
 likewise wisheth that his brother's Will might take effect. 
 
 " Ad 2^ Interr. respondet, that on what day of the moneth or 
 weeke the said deceased declared his Will, as is above deposed, he 
 now remembreth not precisely ; but well remembreth, that it was 
 in a forenoone, and on the very day he this deponent was goeing 
 in the country in [the] Ipswich coach, which goeth not out of 
 towne till noone or thereabout ; and he veryly beleeveth in his 
 conscience, that the residue of his estate he did then dispose of in 
 these very words, viz. And all the residue of my estate I leave to 
 the disposall of Elizaheth my loving wife ; or he used words to 
 the selfe-sarae effect, et aliter referendo se ad pre-depos. nescit re- 
 spondere. 
 
 " Ad 3°^ Interr. respondet, that the said deceased was then ill 
 of the goute, and what he then spake touching his Will was 
 in a very calme manner ; only [he] complained, but without pas- 
 sion, that his children had been unkind to him, but that his wife 
 had been very kind and careful of him ; and he believeth the 
 only reason induced the said deceased at that time to declare his 
 Will was, that he this deponent might know it before his goeing 
 into the country, et aliter referendo se ad pre-deposita nescit re- 
 spondere. 
 
 " Ad 4"^ Interr. respondet, that he knoweth not how the parties 
 ministring these interrogatories frequent the church, or in what 
 manner of behaviour of life and conversation they are of, they 
 living apart from their father four or five yeares last past, and as 
 touching his the deceased's displeasure with them, he only heard 
 
Milton's will. 143 
 
 him say at the tyme of declareing of his "Will, that they were un- 
 dutifuU and unkind to him, not expressing any particulars ; but 
 in former tymes he hath herd him complaine, that they were care- 
 less of him being blind, and made nothing of deserteing him, et 
 aliter nescit respondere. 
 
 " Ad 5°^ Interr. respondet, that since this respondent's comeing 
 to London this Michaelmas Terme last paste, this respondent's 
 sister, the party now producent in this cause, told this respondent, 
 that the deceased his brother did after his this respondent's goe- 
 ing into the country in Trinity vacacion last summer [say,] that, 
 if she should have any overplus above a £1000 come to her hands 
 of his the deceased's estate, she should give the same to this re- 
 spondent's children : but the deceased himselfe did not declare any 
 such thing to this respondent at the tyme of his declaring his 
 "WiU, the tyme above deposed of. 
 
 " Ad Q^ Interr. respondet, that he beleeveth that what is left to 
 the parties mini string these interrogatories by the said deceased's 
 Will, is in the hands of persons of ability abeU to pay the same, 
 being their grandmother and uncle ; and he hath seen the grand- 
 father's Will wherein 'tis particularly directed to be paid unto 
 them by his executors, et aliter nescit respondere. 
 
 " Ad 7°^ Interr. respondet, that he this respondent did draw upp 
 the very Will executed in this cause, and write it with his owne 
 hand, when he came to this court, about the 23rd of November 
 last past, and at that tyme this respondent did read the same all 
 over to Elizabeth Fisher, the said deceased's late maid servant, 
 and she said she remembered the same, and in confirmation whereof 
 set her marke thereto in manner as on the same WiU executed in 
 this cause is now to be seen. And this respondent waited on the 
 said deceased's widdow once at Doctor Exton's chambers about this 
 suite, at which tyme she wanted some halfe crownes, and this re- 
 spondent lent her then two halfe crownes, but more he hath at noe 
 tyme paid either to Doctor or Proctor in this cause. 
 
 " Ad 8°^ Interr. respondet, that he knoweth of noe fortune given 
 by the said deceased to the parties ministring these interrogatories, 
 besides the portion which he was promised with his former wife in 
 marriage, being a £1000 which is stiU unpaid besides the interest 
 thereof for about twenty yeares, saveing his charges in their main- 
 tenance and breeding, et aliter nescit respondere, saveing that Anne 
 Milton interr. is lame and helples. 
 
144 NOTES. 
 
 "Ad ult. reddit causas scientisB suae ut supra. 
 " Die prid. repetit, cor. Doctore Lloyd, Surrog. 
 
 " Chb. Milton. 
 
 " Milton con. Thompson, 
 
 " Milton et Milton, Clements. 
 
 Sup. All"'" artic. et Testamento 
 nuncupativo Johan. Milton de- 
 functi ex parte Elizabethae 
 Milton in hujusmodi Causa dat 
 et admiss. examinat. 
 
 " 15° Dec. 1674. 
 " Maria Fisher, soluta famul. domestica Johan. Batten habitan. in 
 vico vocat. Bricklane in Old Streete ubi moram fecit per spa- 
 cium sex hebdomadarum aut eo circiter, antea cum Benj amino 
 "Whitcomb Mercatore habitan. in vico vocat. Coleman Streete 
 London per spacium 3m. mensium, antea cum Gruiddon Cul- 
 cap infra locum vocat. Smock Alley prope Spittlefields per 
 spacium unius anni, aut eo circiter, antea cum Johanne Bay- 
 ley infra Oppidum Milton in Com. Stafford per spacium du- 
 orum annorum, ante cum Johanne Baddily infra parochiam 
 de Milton praed. per spacium trium annorum, et antea cum 
 quodam Rogers Hargrave infra parochiam de Milton praed. 
 per spacium duorum annorum aut eo circiter, orta infra paro- 
 chiam de Norton in Com. Stafford praed. aetatis 23 aut eo cir- 
 citer, testis, etc. 
 
 " Ad omnes articulos dictae All"'" et ad testamentum nuncupati- 
 vum Johan. Milton testatoris in hac causa defuncti in hujusmodi 
 neg" dat. et exhibit, deponit et dicit, that this deponent knew and 
 was well acquainted with the articulate John Milton, the testator 
 in this cause deceased, for about a twelve moneth before his death, 
 who dyed about a moneth since to the best of this deponent's re- 
 membrance ; And saith, that on a day hapning about two moneths 
 since, as neare as this deponent can remember, this deponent being 
 then in the kitchen of the house *of the aforesaid Jolm Milton, sci- 
 tuate against the Artillery Ground neare Bunhill Fields, and about 
 noone of the same day, the said deceased and the producent Eliza- 
 beth his wife being then at dinner in the said kitchen, hee the said 
 deceased amongst other discourse then had betweene him and his 
 said wife, did then speake to his said wife and utter these words, 
 viz. Make much of mee as long as I live, for thou hnowest I have 
 
♦ Milton's will. 145 
 
 given thed all when I dye at thy disposal; there being tHen present 
 in the said kitchen this deponent's sister and contest, namely Eliza- 
 beth Pysher. And the said deceased was at that time of perfect 
 mind and memory, and talked and discoursed sensibly and well, 
 and was very merry, and seemed to be in good health of body, et 
 aliter nescit. 
 
 " Signum Maei^ Fishee. 
 
 " Ad Inteeeogatoeia. 
 
 " Ad primum Interr. respondet, that this respondent hath noe 
 relation or dependance on the producent Elizabeth Milton, that it is 
 indifferent to this respondent which of the parties in this suite 
 obtaine, and would give the victory in this cause if in her power 
 to that party that hath most right ; but which party hath most 
 right thereto this respondent knoweth not, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Ad secundum Interr. respondet, that this respondent doth not 
 remember the day when the deceased declared the words by her 
 pre-deposed, but remembreth that it was about noone of such day 
 that the words which hee then declared were these, viz. Make much 
 of mee as long as I live, for thou knowest I have given thee all when 
 I dye at thy disposall; then speaking to his wife Elizabeth Milton 
 the party producent in this cause, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Ad tertium Interr. respondet, that the deceased, when hee de- 
 clared the words pre-deposed, was then at dinner with his wife the 
 party producent, and was then very merry, and seemed to be in 
 good health of body ; but upon what occasion hee spoke the said 
 words shee knoweth not, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Ad quartum Interr. respondet, that this respondent knoweth 
 neither of the parties ministrant in this cause, saving this respon- 
 dent once saw Anne Milton, one of the ministrants, et nescit re- 
 spondere pro parte sua. 
 
 " Ad quintum Interr. nescit respondere. 
 
 " Ad sextum Interr. nescit respondere. 
 
 " Ad septimum Interr. non concernit earn, et nescit respondere. 
 
 " Ad octavum Interr. respondet, that this respondent once saw 
 the Interr. Anne Milton, but doth not remember whether shee was 
 lame or helplesse, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Ad 9"^ Interr. respondet, that this respondent knoweth nothing 
 of the deceased's estate or the value thereof, et aliter nescit. 
 
 h 
 
 i 
 
146 NOTES. 
 
 " Eodem die repetit. coram Doctore Digby, Surro. etc., pnte 
 Tho. Welham, N.P. 
 
 " Signum Maei^ Fishee. 
 
 "Eodem Die 
 
 Elizabetha Eisher, famula domestica Elizabethse Milton ptia 
 producentis in hac causa cum qua et Johanne Milton ejus 
 marito defuncto vixit per spacium 13 mensium, antea cum 
 quodam Tboma Adams apud Bagnall in Com. Stafford per 
 spacium trium annorum et sex mensium, antea cum W^° 
 Bourne Gen. infra parochiam de Woolstilstan in Com. Staf- 
 ford prsed. per spacium duorum annorum, orta infra parocbiam 
 de Norton in Com. prsed. setatis 28 annorum aut eo circiter, 
 testis, etc. 
 
 " Ad omnes articulos dictae AU"'* et ad testamentum nuncupa- 
 tivum Joban. Milton testatoris in bac causa defuncti in bujusmodi 
 negotio dat. exbibit. et admiss. dejponet et dicit, tbat this deponent 
 was servant unto Mr. John Milton the testator in this cause de- 
 ceased for about a yeare before bis death, who died upon a Sunday 
 the fifteenth of November last at night, And saith that on a day 
 hapning in the month of July last, the time more certainly she 
 remembereth not, this deponent being then in the deceased's 
 lodging chamber, bee the said deceased, and the party producent 
 in this cause his wife, being then alsoe in the said chamber at din- 
 ner together, and the said Elizabeth Milton the party producent 
 having provided something for the deceased's dinner which bee 
 very well liked, bee the said deceased then spoke to his said wife 
 these or the like words, as neare as this deponent can remember, 
 viz. God have mercy, Betty, I see thou wilt performe according to 
 thy promise in providing mee such dishes as I think fitt whilst I 
 live, and when I dye thou Tcnowest that I have left thee all, there 
 being noebody present in the said chamber with the ?aid deceased 
 and his wife but this deponent : And the said testator at that 
 time was of perfect mind and memory, and talked and discoursed 
 sensibly and well, but was then indisposed in his body by reason 
 of the distemper of the gout, which bee had then upon him. Fur- 
 ther this deponent saith, that shee hath sevrall times heard the 
 said deceased, since the time above deposed of, declare and say, 
 that bee had made provision for his children in his lifetime, and 
 had spent the greatest part of his estate in providing for them, 
 
Milton's will. 147 
 
 and that hee was resolved hee would doe noe more for them live- 
 ing or dyeing, for that little part which hee had left hee had given 
 to his wife the articulate Elizabeth the producent, or he used 
 words to that effect. And likewise told this deponent, that there 
 was a thousand pounds left in Mr. Powell's hands to be disposed 
 amongst his children hereafter. By all which words this respon- 
 dent verily beleeveth that the said testator had given all his estate 
 to the articulate Elizabeth his wife, and that shee should have the 
 same after his decease, et aliter nescit respondere, saving that the 
 said deceased was at the several times of declaring the words last 
 pre-deposed alsoe of perfect mind and memory. 
 
 " Signum Elizab. Eisheb. 
 
 " Ad Inteekogatoeia. 
 
 "Ad primum Interr. respondet, that this respondent was servant 
 to the deceased in his lifetime and is now servant to the produ- 
 cent, and therefore hath a dependency upon her as her servant, 
 that if the victory were in this respondent's power shee would give 
 the deceased's estate equally to be shared betweene tlie ministrants 
 and the producent, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Ad secundum Interr. respondet, that this respondent doth not 
 remember on what day the deceased declared the words first by 
 her afore deposed, but it was about noone of such day when he 
 was at dinner that the precise words, as neare as this respondent 
 can remember, which the deceased used at that time, were these, 
 viz. God liave mercy, Betty, (speaking to his wife Elizabeth Mil- 
 ton, for soe hee usually called her,) / see thou wilt performe ac- 
 cording to thy promise in providing mee such dishes as I thinic fitt 
 whilst Hive, and when I dye thouhnowest that I have left thee all ; 
 et aliter nescit, saving that this respondent well remembreth that 
 the deceased declared the words last by her deposed to the arti- 
 cles of the allegation to this respondent once on a Sunday in the 
 afternoone, but on what day of the month or in what month the 
 said Sunday then happened this respondent doth not remember. 
 
 " Ad tertium Interr. respondet, that the occasion of the de- 
 ceased's speaking of the words deposed by this respondent in her 
 answer to the next precedent interrogatory was upon the pro- 
 ducent's provideing the deceased such victuals for his dinner as 
 hee liked, and that he was then indifferent well in health, saving 
 that some time he was troubled with the paine of the gout, and 
 
 L 2 
 
148 NOTES. 
 
 that hee was at that time very merry and not in any passion or 
 angry humour, neither at that time spoke anything against any 
 of his children that this respondent heard of, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Ad quartum Interr. respondet, that this respondent hath heard 
 the deceased declare his displeasure against the parties ministrant 
 his children, and particularly the deceased declared to this respon- 
 dent that, a little before hee was marryed to Elizabeth Milton his 
 now relict, a former maid-servant of his told Mary, one of the de- 
 ceased's daughters and one of the ministrants, that shee heard the 
 deceased was to be marryed, to which the said Mary replyed to 
 the said maid-servant, that that was noe news to heare of his wed- 
 ding, but if shee could heare of his death that was something : and 
 further told this respondent, that all his said children did combine 
 together and counsel his maid-servant to cheat him the deceased 
 in her markettings, and that his said children had made away 
 some of his bookes and would have sold the rest of his bookes 
 to the dunghill women ; or hee the said deceased spoke words to 
 this respondent to the selfe-same effect and purpose : that this 
 respondent knoweth not what frequenters of the church, or what 
 good livers, the parties ministrant or either of them are, et aliter 
 neseit. 
 
 " Ad quintum Interr. resjpondet, that this respondent doth not 
 know that the deceased's wife was to have £1000 and the interro- 
 gative children of Christopher Milton the residue, nor doth this 
 respondent know that the said Elizabeth, the deceased's wife, hath 
 promised the interrogative Christopher Milton or his children any 
 such thing in case shee should prevaile in this cause; that the 
 said Mrs. Milton never confessed soe much in this respondent's 
 hearing, or to anybody else that this respondent knoweth of, et 
 aliter nescit. 
 
 "Ad sextum Interr. respondet, that this respondent believeth 
 that what is left the deceased's children in the Will nuncupative 
 in this cause executed and mencioned therein to be due from Mr. 
 Powell, is a good debt ; for that the said Mr. Powell is reputed a 
 rich man, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Ad septimum Interr. respondet, that this respondent did vo- 
 luntarily tell the interrogative Mrs. Milton, what shee heard the 
 deceased say, which was to the effect by her pre- deposed, et aliter 
 nescit. 
 . " Ad octavum Interr. respondet, that this respondent knoweth 
 
Milton's will. 149 
 
 not what the deceased did in his lifetime bestow on the ministrants 
 his children, and that the interrogative Anne Milton is lame, but 
 hath a trade and can live by the same, which is the making of gold 
 and silver lace, and which the deceased bred her up to, et aliter 
 nescit. 
 
 " Ad nonum Interr. respondet, that this respondent knoweth not 
 the deceased's estate, or the value thereof, et aliter nescit. 
 
 " Eodem die repetit. coram Doctore TrumhuU, Surrog. etc» 
 Tho. Welham, N.P. 
 
 " Signum Elizabeth-^ Pisheb." 
 
PART II. 
 
 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
153 
 
 OPINIONS OP MILTON. 
 
 ON RELIGION. 
 
 In what precedes we have given such particulars of the 
 Hfe of Milton as have been transmitted to our times. 
 His opinions on religion, politics, and other important 
 subjects are now to claim our attention ; and it surely 
 must be a matter of the utmost interest to ascertain 
 what a man so eminently endowed, and so free from the 
 restraints of authority and custom in his sentiments, 
 thought on matters which men have agreed in regarding 
 as those of the deepest importance. 
 
 We commence naturally with the subject of Religion, 
 the speculative portion of which so much occupied the 
 minds of men in the centuries immediately subsequent 
 to the Reformation. And here we have a most valuable 
 aid in the work on Christian Doctrine, of which we have 
 already spoken,* and which was unknown till the pre- 
 sent century. This is in every respect a most valuable 
 and important work, without a parallel perhaps at its 
 time, — exhibiting the efforts of a powerful mind to ar- 
 rive at truth, disregarding authority, and guided only by 
 the rules of logic and criticism, as far as they were known 
 
 * See above, p. 111. 
 
154 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 and followed at the time. It also shows the force of 
 early prejudices, and how utterly impossible it is for even 
 the most powerful mind totally to emancipate itself from 
 their influence ; for we shall find Milton, while fancy- 
 ing he is following Scripture alone, maintaining opinions 
 which were the mere inventions of the Fathers. 
 
 It is a question if it was possible, in the time of Mil- 
 ton, to arrive at the knowledge of the exact sense of the 
 language of Scripture ; and we are of opinion that it was 
 not. The following are, we apprehend, the requisites 
 for the Scriptural critic, and we will apply them to the 
 case of Milton. 
 
 1. The first and most absolutely necessary is the sin- 
 cere love o f truth for its own sake, independent of the 
 worldly advantages which may be connected with it. 
 Nothing is more rare than this ; but probably no man 
 could lay claim to it with more justice than Milton. 
 
 2. The next is moral courage , that will set at naught 
 the argumentum ad verecundiam ; and refuse uncondi- 
 tional submission to the authority of Councils, Fathers, 
 and theologians, as well knowing that infallibility belongs 
 not to man either individually or collectively ; that it is 
 only in matters of fact that authority, when free from 
 suspicion, is to be received ; and that in matters of opi- 
 nion every one is bound to produce his reasons and 
 submit them to examination. Here too Milton willnot 
 be found wanting. 
 
 3. The third requisite is what is termed the critical 
 sense^— that power of discerning, by a delicate applica- 
 tion of the principles of logic and grammar, what is ge- 
 nuine and what is not so in a work, — what is the exact 
 meaning of a word, a phrase, or a passage. This, which 
 in some cases is termed tact, was d.efectiv.e not only 
 
ON RELIGION. 155 
 
 in Milton, but in all the scholars of his time and of the 
 preceding century; for though, like every other mental 
 power, it is the gift of Nature, yet there is none which 
 has more need of example and exercise for its perfec- 
 tion. It would surely have amazed the contemporaries of 
 Milton to have been told that many of the letters and 
 speeches of Cicero are not the composition of that great 
 orator ; yet what critic since the time of Tunstall, who first 
 discerned a portion of the truth, has had any doubt on 
 the subject ? And even Tunstall himself might wonder at 
 finding his own principles applied, successfully we think, 
 even to three of the orations against Catilina.* In that 
 time also no one had any suspicion that the Ilias was not 
 one organic piece, the product of one mind, as much as 
 the ^Eneis or the Paradise Lost ; while now the ablest 
 critics are agreed to regard it as the work of more minds 
 than one. Again, no one will say that the scholars of 
 the present day are more, or even as familiar with the 
 Classics as were those of Milton's time, and yet it is not 
 presumption to assert that they understand them more 
 completely ;t for knowledge of this kind, like that in 
 natural science, is progressive, and the students of the 
 coming centuries may elucidate passages which we de- 
 ceive ourselves in fancying that we understand perfectly. 
 All that has been said here apphes with still greater 
 force to the interpretation of Scripture, on which in the 
 time of Milton the critical sense had only ventured to 
 exercise itself with timidity. 
 
 4. To these internal qualities, in order to form the per- 
 fect Biblical critic, must be added what we may term the 
 
 * See our note on Sail. Cat. lii. 1. 
 
 t Thus there are errors, as we shall show, in Milton's own translation 
 of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha. 
 
156 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 external one, — of an extensive and accurate acquaint- 
 ance with not merely the Greek and Hebrew languages, 
 but with the Arabic and the other kindred dialects of 
 the latter. To this must be added a knowledge of the 
 manners, and the modes of thought, feeling, and ex- 
 pression of the Orientals, and of the geology, geography, 
 natural history, etc. of the East. It is needless to say 
 how deficient Milton's age was in all these branches of 
 knowledge. 
 
 In reading the theologic work of Milton we are there- 
 fore to expect to meet with error, such being the inevit- 
 able consequence of the circumstances under which he 
 composed it. 
 
 The progress of Milton's mind in theology was of 
 course, like that of the mind of every independent 
 ^ thinker, gradual. He was, as we have seen, brought up 
 ^^~^n Puritanism, but certainly not in 'the most straitest 
 ssect,' or else even in his seventeenth year his muse would 
 Cnot, though it were in obedience to orders, have poured 
 Sforth elegiac strains on the death of the anti-puritanic 
 s Bishop Andrews, or have, some time later, sung the apo- 
 ^ theosis of the wife of the Catholic Marquess of Win- 
 7chester. In the poems which he wrote on the birth and 
 death of our Lord we meet with nothing particular, ex- 
 cept one place, where the young poet appears, uncon- 
 sciously no doubt, as a Tritheist. During the happy 
 period at Horton he probably did not give overmuch of 
 his time and thoughts to knotty poiilts of theology ; but 
 on his return from the Continent he plunged at once 
 into the religious controversies of the age. We cannot 
 however discover any change in his theology. 
 
 Thus in the splendid peroration of his treatise Of Re- 
 formation in England, — which we shall give at length in 
 
ON RELIGION. 157 
 
 the next division of our work, — he expresses the ortho- 
 dox doctrine of the Trinity, " OneJDriper&ond Godhead^'' 
 and in more than one place of that treatise he speaks of 
 Arianism as a heresy. In the Animadversions, etc. he 
 addresses the Son as "the ever-begotten Light and 
 perfect Image of the Father," terms corresponding with 
 those of the Nicene Creed.* 
 
 He also had no objection to infant baptism, for in 
 The Reason of Church Government (book ii. chap. 2) 
 he says : — 
 
 Ye have been told, not to set your threshold by his threshold, 
 or your posts by his posts ; but your sacrament, your sign, call it 
 what you will, by his sacrament, baptizing the Christian infant 
 with a solemn sprinkle, and unbaptizing for your own part, with a 
 profane and impious forefinger ; as if, when ye had laid the purify- 
 ing element upon his forehead, ye meant to cancel and cross it out 
 again with a character not of God's blessing. 
 
 In the Doctrine of Divorce (i. 14) he speaks of those 
 " who follow Anabaptisyn, Familism, Antinomianism, and 
 other fanatic dreams." 
 
 He also at this time held the Calvinistic doctrine of 
 Predestination, but in the Sublapsarian form ; for he thus 
 writes in that treatise (ii. ch. 3) : — 
 
 The Jesuits, and that sect among us which is named of Armi- 
 nius, are wont to charge us of making God the author of sin, in 
 two degrees especially, not to speak of his permission : 1. Because 
 we hold that He hath decreed some to damnation (and consequently 
 to sin, say they) ; next, because those means, which are of saving 
 knowledge to others. He makes to them an occasion of greater 
 sin. Yet considering the perfection wherein man was created, and 
 
 * The following passage occurs in his Ready and Easy Method, etc., 
 printed early in 1660 : " Which Thou suffer not, who didst create man- 
 kind free ! nor Thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of 
 men ! " — Compare Par. Lost, iii. 372 and 383. This looks like a change 
 of opinion. 
 
 > 
 
158 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 might have stood, — no decree necessitating his freewill, but subse- 
 quent, though not in time, yet in order, to causes which were in 
 his own power, — they might methinks be persuaded to absolve 
 both God and us. 
 
 These are the religious opinions which he seems to 
 have held up to at least the thirty-seventh year of his 
 age ; and we have hardly any further indications of his 
 theologic sentiments for more than twenty years, when 
 / Paradise Lost was given to the world. In this poem the 
 /Arian doctrine respecting the Son was expressed in so 
 plain and unequivocal a manner, that were it not for the 
 I cause which we shall hereafter assign, one might wonder 
 that every reader did not discern it. He would also 
 seem to have given up the doctrine of infant baptism ; 
 for when speaking of the charge given to the Apostles 
 to teach all nations, he adds : — 
 
 Them who shall believe 
 Baptizing in the projluent stream, the sign 
 Of washing them from guilt of sin to life 
 Pure and in mind prepared, if so befall, 
 For death like that which the Eedeemer died ; — xii. 441. 
 
 which words will properly apply only to grown persons, 
 
 and we shall presently see were meant only to apply to 
 
 such persons. With respect to jDredestination, any one 
 
 [who reads the language respecting it which the poet has 
 
 I ventured to put into the mouth of the Almighty (iii. 98 
 
 f seq.) will be inclined to suspect that his opinions on that 
 
 I^Rubject also had undergone some alteration. Finally, in 
 
 his short treatise Of true Rehgion, Heresy, etc., published 
 
 in 1673, we meet with that fine passage which we shall 
 
 give below, on toleration, which breathes the full spirit 
 
 of Christian charity, suitable to the nature of so great a 
 
 poet and so heavenly-minded a man as Milton. 
 
 Such then was the knowledge of Milton's theologic 
 
ON RELIGION. 159 
 
 sentiments which the world possessed till the end of the 
 first quarter of the present century, when the Latin 
 manuscript of the treatise on Christian Doctrine which 
 had been discovered in the State Paper Office was 
 printed, with an excellent translation by Dr. Sumner, 
 now Bishop of Winchester.* This, as already observed, 
 is in every respect a most remarkable work, as exhibiting 
 the unbiassed — as far as was possible at the time — opi- 
 nions of a man of the highest mental powers. From 
 Scripture alone he deduces his proofs ; and while the 
 theologic works of the age are overlaid with quotations 
 from Greek and Latin writers, disfiguring the text or 
 covering the margin, here we find a perfect freedom from 
 such dependence and bondage. It were indeed to be 
 desired, but it was hardly attainable at the time, that 
 the mind of the writer had been less enthralled to the 
 mere letter of Scripture, and, though he never actually 
 asserts it, to the theory of Plenary Inspiration ; for he 
 then might have escaped some of the errors into which 
 he has fallen, all of which may be traced to this source. 
 It is a remarkable fact that the writers of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries seem to have taken for granted 
 the divine origin of the Scriptures and their plenary in- 
 spiration. Thus the divines who had the task of com- 
 piling the Articles of the Church of England never even 
 mention the inspiration of Scripture ; in consequence of 
 which omission (for such it surely was) the clergy, not 
 merely the laity, of that Church are at perfect liberty to 
 form what opinions they may please on the subject, and 
 to determine on critical grounds what parts of Scripture 
 are genuine and what are suspicious. This is the more 
 
 * Our subsequent quotations shall be from tbis translation in the 
 quarto edition. The italics in them are in general our own. 
 
160 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 to be wondered at, as they must have been well aware 
 that Luther and Zwingle had both rejected the Apoca- 
 lypse, and that Luther also had at least strong doubts 
 as to the genuineness of the Epistles of James and Jude, 
 and Calvin as to that of the Second of Peter. 
 
 In like manner neither here nor elsewhere do we find 
 anything of moment on what are now called the Evi- 
 dences of Christianity ; all was taken for granted. Even 
 the treatise of Grotius appears to have been intended 
 for the convincing of Mohammedans and heathens, as 
 those born where the Gospel was preached were thought 
 to require no proofs of what was held to be as certain 
 as the demonstrations of mathematics. This is however 
 ,no longer the case. The evidence of Christianity is now 
 recognized as being only moral evidence, and therefore 
 subject to all the doubt and uncertainty belonging to 
 evidence of that nature. It is therefore to be hoped that 
 the following observations may not prove unacceptable to 
 persons of a serious cast of thought. They are intended 
 to supply the deficiency of Milton's theologic work. 
 
 It is surprising how few persons are able to give any 
 valid 'reason for the hope that is in them.' Most be- 
 lieve because their fathers before them believed. To some, 
 such as Luther and Johnson, the main argument is the 
 accomplishment of prophecy; and yet — it is strange how 
 it could have escaped the acute intellect of Johnson — 
 this is actually no argument at all, at least not a primary 
 one ; for before we can assert that an event was foretold, 
 we must prove that it happened, which in this case is the 
 quod erat demonstrmidimi ; if the truth of the Gospel 
 history is proved, we have all that was required. Many 
 of the other arguments are not much stronger than this ; 
 even that on which Paley rests almost exclusively is by 
 
ON RELIGION. 161 
 
 no means unanswerable, and we find at length that no- 
 thing can be firmly relied on but the miracles, or rather 
 the one great miracle, the Resurrection ; and the inquiry 
 must be, what proof there is of the truth of that stupen- 
 dous event. 
 
 Have we the testimony of any sensible, honest eye- 
 witness ? It is very doubtful whether we have or not. 
 Two of the Gospels, it is true, are ascribed by the tradi- 
 tion of the Church to two of the apostles ; but we meet 
 with this tradition first in Irenseus, a writer who did not 
 flourish till the end of the second century, and whose 
 critical acumen was by no means great. It seems more- 
 over almost morally impossible that the two narratives 
 could have both been written by eye-witnesses, and we 
 have nothing but the aforesaid tradition in support of 
 the assertion of either being the work of an apostle. In 
 this uncertainty, whither then are we to have recourse ? 
 Here Providence has preserved us an evidence which, to 
 our mind at least, is invincible, — that afforded by the 
 Epistles of the Apostle Paul. 
 
 In the whole compass of literature there is no work of 
 which the genuineness is more certain than of these epis- 
 tles, at least the first four, of which alone we will speak 
 at present, and against which even the wildest scepti- 
 cism has been unable to raise any doubt. They stand on 
 precisely the same ground as those of Cicero, ^. e. they 
 have all the internal marks of authenticity, and their ge- 
 nuineness has never been disputed or even suspected. 
 What we would say then to any honest inquirer after the 
 truth is this ; Read the two Epistles to the Corinthians 
 carefully ; mark the clearness and cogency of reasoning, 
 the sound good sense and good feeling, the noble dis- 
 interestedness, which appear in every line of them ; and 
 
 M 
 
162 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 when you have done so, if you can lay your hand on your 
 heart and say with truth and sincerity that you can 
 suspect the writer to have been a dupe or an impostor, 
 deceived himself or desirous of deceiving others, we will 
 confess that we have no further arguments to offer, and 
 that we abandon all hopes of ever convincing you. It 
 seems to us however almost impossible that such should 
 be the case with any sincere inquirer after the truth. 
 
 In the first of these epistles — written to those who 
 could contradict and expose him if he asserted anything 
 that he could not prove, and who would have been but 
 too glad to do so — he asserts in the strongest terms that 
 he himself had seen Jesus Christ after he had been put 
 to death ; and he mentions several other persons who to 
 his knowledge, or at least the best of his belief, had also 
 seen him. He further affirms that he had received the 
 power of performing miracles. The second epistle proves 
 that his assertions had not been, or could not be, contra- 
 dicted. We thus have what we were in search of — the 
 testimony of one whom we may almost regard as an eye- 
 witness to the truth of the Resurrection. In confirma- 
 tion of this evidence of St. Paul we may add the last 
 thirteen chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, which have 
 evidently been taken from the diary or journal of one of 
 Paul's companions, — in all probability Timothy,* — and 
 
 * This theory, and no other, will account for the omission in the Acts 
 of the toils and dangers undergone by St. Paul, and mentioned by him- 
 self, 2 Cor. xi. 23 seq. They had occurred in the first years of his la- 
 bours, and before he had met with Timothy. It may also account for 
 the abrupt termination of the Acts ; for, as the tradition is probably 
 correct that St. Paul perished in the Neronian persecution, it would ap- 
 pear that he wrote his Epistle to the Philippians, in which he mentions 
 his intention of sending Timothy to them, a little before that event, and 
 Timothy therefore ended his journal when he left Rome. The writer 
 of the Acts then finding no more documents, stopped at that point. 
 
ON RELIGION. 163 
 
 which bear ample testimony to his power of performing 
 miracles. Finally, the character of Jesus Christ, as por- 
 trayed in the Gospels, especially in that of Matthew, i{ 
 so simple, so beautiful, so elevated, so divine, that we can 
 hardly conceive how any one can doubt of its truth and 
 reality. Then as to the Old Testament — when we reac 
 the writings of the Prophets, and observe the pure and 
 stainless and exalted morality which they contain, so far 
 beyond anything that Greece or India can display, a feel- 
 ing is generated that they must have had an instruction 
 to which the sages of those countries could lay no claim. 
 This evidence we regard as sufficient, though at the same 
 time we acknowledge that it is accompanied by many 
 difficulties of no small magnitude, for greater would not 
 accord with our -^fee-will. Had, for example, the evi- 
 dence been like that of mathematics, where would be the 
 merit of faith ? In moral matters moral evidence alone 
 can be given, and such is rarely free from doubt and 
 difficulty. We may now see that Christianity stands on 
 its own foundation, and is entirely independent of the 
 Old Testament, and therefore unaffected by the attacks 
 of sceptics on the narratives which it contains. In fact, 
 even if it were proved to be no more authentic than the 
 mythology and tradition of other ancient nations, the evi- 
 dences of Christianity would not be thereby weakened in 
 the slightest degree. Let then the advocate for Chris- 
 tianity make the argument from St. Paul's Epistles his 
 Torres Vedras, as it were, and he may safely abandon the 
 open country of the Old Testament to the enemy, though 
 it be but for a time.* 
 
 * Thus, for instance, tlie truth of Christianity cannot be affected by 
 the discoveries of geology. By the way, we could wish that geologists 
 would recollect the precept of ne sutor ultra crepidam ; for they often 
 make sad work of the interpretation of Scripture. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 Having thus endeavoured to supply an important 
 omission in Milton's treatise, we will now proceed to 
 give some account of the contents of that very remark- 
 able work. 
 
 It is divided into two Books : the first, Of the Know- 
 ledge of God, in thirty-three chapters ; the second. Of 
 the Service of God, in seventeen chapters : the former 
 being a body of theology, the latter a system of Christian 
 ethics. It commences in the following manner, in imi- 
 tation of the Apostolic Epistles ; for we must ever bear 
 in mind, in reading the later works of Milton on theo- 
 logic subjects, that, as we shall presently show, he held 
 himself to be under the guidance of the divine spirit of 
 Truth. 
 
 . John Milton to all the Churclies of Christ, and to all who pro- 
 fess the Christian faith throughout the world, peace and the re- 
 cognition of the truth and eternal salvation in God the Father and 
 in our Lord, Jesus Christ. 
 
 The first point which he discusses is the being, nature, 
 and character of God. He gives various proofs of his 
 existence : a thing perhaps hardly needful, for it would 
 not, we apprehend, be very difficult to show that no 
 thinking man ever did, or ever could, disbeheve in the 
 existence of the Deity, though he might reject all anthro- 
 pomorphism, and name him Nature, Law, Chance, or 
 otherwise. But what is novel in Milton's view of God 
 is, that he understands literally what are termed the 
 anthropopathic expressions of Scripture respecting the 
 Deity :— 
 
 It is better [says he] to contemplate the Deity, and to conceive 
 of him, not with reference to human passions, — that is, after the 
 manner of men, who are never weary of forming subtle imaginations 
 respecting him, — but after the manner of Scripture, that is, in the 
 
ON RELIGION. 165 
 
 way in which God has offered himself to our contemplation ; nor 
 should we think that he would say or direct anything to be written 
 of himself which is inconsistent with the opinion he wishes us to 
 entertain of his character. Let us require no better authority than 
 G-od himself for determining what is worthy or unworthy of him. 
 If " it repented Jehovah that he had made man," let us believe 
 that it did repent him, only taking care to remember that what is 
 called repentance when applied to G-od does not arise from in- 
 advertency as in man. . . . Again, if " it grieved the Lord at his 
 heart," and if "his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel," let 
 us believe that it did grieve him. ... If after the work of six 
 days it be said of God that "he rested and was refreshed ;" if it 
 be said that "he feared the wrath of the enemy," let us believe 
 that it is not beneath the dignity of God to grieve in that for 
 which he is grieved, or to be refreshed in that which refresheth 
 him, or to fear in that he feareth. For however we may attempt 
 to soften down such expressions by a latitude of interpretation 
 when applied to the Deity, it comes in the end to precisely the 
 same. If God be said to have " made man in his own image, after 
 his own likeness," and that too not only as to his soul, but also as 
 to his outward form, — unless the same words have different signifi- 
 cations here and chap. v. 3, "Adam begat a son in his own likeness 
 after his image," — and if God habitually assign to himself the 
 members and form of man, why should we be afraid of attributing 
 to him what he attributes to himself, — so long as what is imper- 
 fection and weakness, when viewed in reference to ourselves, be 
 considered as most complete and excellent whenever it is imputed 
 to God ? . . . . 
 
 To speak summarily, God either is or he is not such as he repre- 
 sents himself to be. If he be really such, why should we think 
 otherwise of him ? If he be not such, on what authority do we 
 say what God has not said ? If at least it be his will that we 
 should thus think of him, why does our imagination wander into 
 some other conception ? Why should we hesitate to conceive of 
 God according to what he has not hesitated to declare explicitly 
 respecting himself? .... In arguing thus, we do not say that 
 God is in fashion like unto man in all his parts and members, but 
 that, as far as we are concerned to know, he is of that form which 
 he attributes to himself in the sacred writings. If therefore we 
 persist in entertaining a different conception of the Deity than 
 
166 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 that whicli it is to be presumed he desires should be cherished, in- 
 asmuch as he has himself disclosed it to us, we frustrate the pur- 
 poses of Grod, instead of rendering him submissive obedience ; as 
 if forsooth we wished to show that it was not we who had thought 
 too meanly of God, but Grod who had thought too meanly of us. 
 
 ^ We have here abundant proof of Milton's belief of 
 the doctrine of plenary inspiration, and may perceive 
 how his logical mind pursued it to its legitimate conse- 
 quences. ^ To any one who reads the Old Testament with 
 a mind free from preconceived notions it must be quite 
 clear that the ancient Israelites conceived of Jehovah in 
 a human form. In truth, who does not ? or who can 
 avoid doing so? The nihil est in intelledu quod non 
 jprius fuerit in sensu of the Aristotelians is perfectly true, 
 and the ideas of reflection, etc. of the metaphysicians are 
 in reality nothing more than mere terms. We cannot 
 conceive an intelligent being without a material form, 
 and the human, as the noblest that we are acquainted 
 with, is naturally that which we ascribe to superior 
 beings. Thus, when in the language of the Articles of 
 the Church we say of God that he is " without body, 
 parts, or passions," the idea in our mind must be pure 
 space ; but when we proceed to the positive affirmation 
 " of infinite power,'' etc., he instantly assumes to us a 
 human form/ and perhaps no one's mind can rise to a 
 higher conception than that of the Ancient of Days in 
 the Book of Daniel. But then the mind which is en- 
 larged by philosophy knows that this is a mere concep- 
 tion, that that form is nowhere really existing, and that 
 the most adequate idea of the Deity is the belief that 
 into whatever remote parts of space we may transport 
 ourselves in imagination, we shall find proofs of power, 
 wisdom, and goodness similar to what we observe in this 
 
ON RELIGION. 167 
 
 world, though possibly varied in character and infinitely 
 greater in degree. The error then of Milton lay in as- 
 suming that to be fixed which was fleeting and variable, 
 and restricting to place the infinite and unlimited. We 
 shall also find that it rested in some part on the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy. 
 
 Milton next proceeds to the consideration of the de- 
 crees of God and predestination. What he says on this^^ 
 subject is little more than an expansion of the place oO 
 Paradise Lost, to which we have referred above. It is<' 
 one of the fruitless attempts to reconcile the absolute j 
 foreknowledge of the Deity with the perfect free-will of) 
 man ; and it is no discredit to Milton to have failed where ) 
 every one else has failed. ^ ^_ 
 
 The nature and character of the Son is next examined 
 into, and at considerable length ; and here the suspicion 
 excited by sundry passages of the Paradise Lost is amply ' 
 confirmed. Milton, after evidently long and anxious in- 
 quiry, arrived at the conclusion that the doctrine deriving 
 its appellation from Arius, but which had been known in 
 the Church long before the time of that presbyter, was 
 the true one, — that Christ was different from and in- 
 ferior to God, and had come into existence in time, in- 
 stead of having been from all eternity. 
 
 Were we to imitate the prudent caution of some 
 writers, we would glide softly over this part of our au- 
 thor's theology, and content ourselves with asserting that 
 he was in error, without deigning to examine his argu- 
 ments. But such a procedure we hold to be unworthy 
 of a biographer of such a man as Milton, who should 
 possess at least a portion of the courage and love of truth 
 by which his subject was distinguished. Besides, we do 
 not believe that the nature of our Lord has been so fully 
 
168 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 s revealed in Scripture as to authorize us to assert that 
 any one opinion is the exact and incontrovertible truth ; 
 for surely that cannot be clearly revealed on which men 
 of equal talent, learning, sagacity, and love of truth have 
 
 Larrived at different conclusions. Thus this very opinion 
 of Milton's has since his time and without a knowledge 
 of his work been openly professed not merely by divines 
 like Clarke and H. Taylor, but even by distinguished pre- 
 lates of our own Church, — Law, Bishop of Carlisle, for 
 instance, till his later years ; and by Doddridge, Taylor, 
 Benson, Price, and other eminent men among the Dis- 
 senters.* The utmost perhaps that we are justified in 
 affirming positively is, that " the fulness of the Godhead 
 dwelt in Christ bodily;" but in a manner unrevealed 
 and probably inconceivable to the human intellect. 
 
 There are, as is well known, three main opinions, with 
 various branches, on this subject : — 1 . That which is 
 termed the orthodox one, and which is held by the Greek, 
 the Latin, and the Protestant Churches alike. It will be 
 found in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, which the 
 Church of England has unconditionally adopted, — un- 
 wisely in our opinion, as it binds her to acknowledge 
 the first four General Councils, and thus enfeebles her in 
 the contest with the Church of Bome.f 2. The Arian, 
 or that held by Milton, of which, though we are unable 
 to receive it, we freely recognize the sublimity and the 
 beauty, and acknowledge that there is no passage in 
 
 * The Bishop of Winchester thinks that if Milton had lived to read 
 the works of Bull and Waterland, he would have thought dijfferently. 
 All those divines whom we have named must however have read them, 
 
 t The Eomish writers assert, and we think with reason, that the 
 doctrine as taught in the Creeds cannot be proved from Scripture alone : 
 see the Bishop of Winchester's note, in p. 80. The same assertion is 
 made in the Tracts for the Times. 
 
ON RELIGION. 169 
 
 Scripture relating to this subject which may not be fairly 
 explained on this hypothesis, some perhaps even better 
 on it than on any other. 3. The Socinian or Huma- 
 nitarian, which regards our Lord as a mere man, and 
 which, whether true or not, is in our opinion so irre- 
 concilable with many passages of Scripture as to require/ 
 interpretations which set at nought the principles ofj 
 grammar and logic. 
 
 After quoting the passages in the New Testament in 
 which the Pather is spoken of by our Lord himself and 
 by St. Paul as the one sole true God, Milton proceeds to 
 examine two of the chief passages which were maintained 
 to assert the Unity in Trinity, as it was termed. The'^g" 
 first of these is, " I and my Pather are one," John x. 30: 
 Here he argues with much ingenuity and at great length 
 from other places in the same Gospel ; but it really sur- 
 prises us how not only Milton, but commentators in ge- 
 neral, should have overlooked the precisely parallel pas- 
 sage, " He that planteth and he that watereth" (/. e. Paul> 
 and Apollos) " are one," 1 Cor. iii. 8, which would have * 
 obviated such an expenditure of labour and ingenuity. 
 The other is, " There are three that bear record in hea- -^ 
 ven, the Pather, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and > 
 these three are one," 1 John v. 7. Milton was aware 
 how dubious this text was, on account of its absence 
 from so many manuscripts and versions ; but he argues 
 that, even granting its genuineness, it is nothing to the 
 purpose. At the present day no critic, to our know- 
 ledge, maintains the genuineness of this verse, which is 
 found in no manuscript anterior to the sixteenth century, 
 in no translation but the Vulgate, and in no manuscript 
 of that earlier than the tenth century, and is referred to 
 by none of the Pathers. 
 
170 OPINIONS or MILTON. 
 
 To the argument that the Son is at times called God, 
 and even Jehovah, and that the attributes of Deity are 
 assigned him, he replies by showing that the word used 
 for God, even in its plural form Eloliim (d^ii'^n) was of 
 a very indefinite nature, being used of angels and men, 
 even of a single angel or single false god ; and he shows 
 the same of Lord, Adonim ipiy^) ; and arguing from 
 the texts which assert that no one can see God, he asserts 
 that in the places where it is said that Jehovah appeared, 
 it was not Jehovah himself that was seen. Thus, refer- 
 ring to Isaiah's vision, he says, " It was not God himself 
 that he saw, but perhaps one of the angels clothed in 
 some modification of the Divine glory, or the Son of God 
 himself, the image of the glory of his Father, as John 
 understood the vision. ' These things said Esaias when 
 he saw His glory.' For if he had been of the same es- 
 sence, he could no more have been seen or heard than the 
 Father himself." 
 
 Milton utterly rejects the use of the doctrine of the 
 twofold nature of Christ, as having no foundation in Scrip- 
 ture. Of those who use it he says : — 
 
 They are constantly shifting their reasoning, Yertumnus-like, 
 and using the twofold nature of Christ developed in his office of 
 Mediator as a ready subterfuge by which to evade any arguments 
 that may be brought against them. "What Scripture says of the 
 Son generally they apply, as suits their purpose, in a partial and 
 restricted sense : at one time to the Son of God, at another to the 
 Son of Man, — now to the Mediator in his divine, now in his hu- 
 man capacity, and now again in his union of both natures. 
 
 For this he asserts there is no warrant in Scripture. 
 
 Milton makes less use than one might have expected 
 of the passage Phil. ii. 5, which we have always regarded 
 as a main support of Arianism, as it is certainly on that 
 hypothesis that it can be most naturally interpreted; for 
 
ON RELIGION. 171 
 
 every one must see the difficulty presented by the sup- 
 position of the omnipresent Being quitting one part of 
 space and proceeding to another. It was probably this ^^ 
 difficulty that made both Luther and Calvin understand 
 it of our Lord's life on earth, supposing that by the/or^ - 
 of God was meant the early, by the for7n of a servant 7 
 the later, portion of his mortal career. But this is not - 
 the sense in which it is understood by the Greek and 
 Latin Churches, and by the greater number of Protes- 
 tant writers. Neither perhaps was it at any time so un- 
 derstood by Milton. His language on this point, in the 
 Christian Doctrine, however, is not by any means so pre- 
 cise as it is in his poetry. 
 
 They also adduce Phil. ii. 6, " Who being in the form of God." 
 But this no more proves him to be God than the phrase which 
 follows — " Took upon him the form of a servant" — proves that 
 he was really a servant, as the sacred writers nowhere use the 
 wordybrm for actual being. But if it be contended that ^^eform 
 of God is here taken in a philosophical sense for the essential 
 form, the consequence cannot be avoided that when Christ laid 
 aside the form he laid aside also the substance and the efficiency 
 of God ; a doctrine against which they protest, and with justice. 
 To be in the form of God therefore seems to be synonymous witKy 
 being in the image of God, which is often predicated of Christ; 7 
 even as man is also said, though in a much lower sense, to be the/ 
 image of God, and to be in the image of God, that is, by creation.? 
 
 Christ therefore having received all these things from the Father, 
 and " being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal 
 with God," namely, because he had obtained them by gift, not by 
 robbery. For if this passage imply his coequality with the Father, 
 it rather refutes than proves his unity of essence ; since equality 
 cannot exist but between two or more essences. Further, the 
 phrases, " he did not think it, — he made himself of no reputation" 
 (literally, he emptied himself), appear inapplicable to the supreme 
 God ; for to think is nothing else than to entertain an opinion, 
 which cannot be properly said of God, Nor can the infinite God 
 be said to empty himself any more than to contradict himself, for 
 
172 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 infinity and emptiness are opposite terms.* But since he emptied 
 himself of that form of God in which he had previously existed, 
 if the form of God is to be taken for the essence of the Deity 
 itself, it would prove him to have emptied himself of that essence, 
 which is impossible. 
 
 Such was the faith of the saints respecting the Son of God ; 
 such is the tenour of the celebrated confession of that faith ; such 
 is the doctrine which alone is taught in Scripture, which is accept- 
 able to God, and has the promise of eternal salvation. . . . Fi- 
 nally, this is the faith proposed to us in the Apostles' Creed, the 
 most ancient and universally received compendium of belief in 
 the possession of the Church. 
 
 He next treats of the Holy Spirit : — 
 
 With regard to the nature of the Spirit, in what manner it ex- 
 ists, or whence it arose, Scripture is silent ; which is a caution to 
 us not to be too hasty in our conclusions on the subject. . . . The 
 terms emanation and procession, employed by theologians on the 
 authority of John xv. 26, do not relate to the nature of the Holy 
 Spirit. . . . These words relate rather to the mission than to the 
 nature of the Spirit ; in which sense the Son also is often said 
 i^eXOciv, which in my opinion may be translated either to yo forth 
 or to proceed from the Father, without making any difference in 
 the meaning. . . . Since therefore the Spirit is neither said to be 
 ^generated nor created, nor is any other mode of existence specifi- 
 7 caily attributed to it in Scripture, we must be content to leave 
 I undetermined a point on which the sacred writers have preserved 
 LfiP uniform a silence. 
 
 He enumerates the different senses in which the word 
 
 Spirit occurs in the Old Testament, and he asserts that 
 
 > " undoubtedly neither David nor any other Hebrew 
 
 \ under the old covenant believed in the personality of that 
 
 i good and Holy Spirit, unless perhaps as an angel." Hav- 
 
 / ing quoted some further texts he says : — 
 
 ^Nothing can be more certain than that all these passages, and 
 
 * Milton would in effect seem in this treatise to have adopted the 
 opinion of Luther and Calvin, for he says (p. 321), " As Christ emptied 
 himself in hoik his natures, so hoih participate in liis exaltation." 
 
ON RELIGION. 173 
 
 many others in the Old Testament, were understood of the virtue 
 and power of God the Father, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit was 
 not yet given, nor believed in even by those who prophesied that 
 it should be poured forth in the latter times. 
 
 He proceeds in like manner to examine the texts of 
 the New Testament relating to the Spirit, and he then 
 replies to those adduced in proof of his divinity and 
 unity with the Father and Son. On one of the strongest, 
 Mat. xxviii. 19, he says : — 
 
 Here mention is undoubtedly made of three persons ; but there 
 is not a word that determines the divinity or unity or equality of 
 these three. ... To be baptized therefore in their name is to be ad- 
 mitted to those benefits and gifts which we have received through 
 the Son and Holy Spirit. . . . When we are baptized in the name 
 of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, this is not done to impress 
 upon our minds the inherent or relative nature of these three 
 persons, but the benefits conferred by them on those who believe 
 — namely, that our eternal salvation is owing to the Father, our 
 redemption to the Son, and our sanctification to the Spirit. 
 
 The conclusion of his discussion is as follows : — 
 
 Lest however we should be altogether ignorant who or what the 
 Holy Spirit is, although Scripture nowhere teaches us in express 
 terms, it may be collected from the passages quoted above that the 
 Holy Spirit, inasmuch as he is a minister of God, and therefore 
 a creature, was created or produced of the substance of God, not 
 by a natural necessity, but by the free-will of the agent, probably 
 before the foundations of the world were laid, but later than the 
 Son, and far inferior to him. It will be objected that thus the 
 Holy Spirit is not sufficiently distinguished from the Son. I reply 
 that the Scriptural expressions themselves, to come forth, to go out 
 from the Father, to proceed from the Father, which mean the same 
 in the Greek, do not distinguish the Son from the Holy Spirit, in- 
 asmuch as these terms are used indiscriminately with reference 
 to both persons, and signify their mission, not their nature. There" 
 is however sufficient reason for placing the name as well as the 
 nature of the Son above that of the Holy Spirit, in the discussion 
 of topics relative to the Deity ; inasmuch as the brightness of the 
 
174 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 glory of God, and the express image of his person, are said to have 
 been impressed on the one and not on the other. 
 
 Having thus given his ideas of the origin and nature 
 of the Son and Spirit, he proceeds to the subject of Crea- 
 tion, or the origin of all other beings and things. This, 
 he says, was effected by God the Father, by means of his 
 Word [the Son] and Spirit, for the manifestation of the 
 glory of his power and goodness. He rejects the ordi- 
 nary opinion of the original matter of the universe hav- 
 ing been formed from nothing, as having no support in 
 the language of Scripture, and being also repugnant to 
 reason. Matter therefore must have existed previous to 
 the Creation, either independently of God, or as having 
 originated from him at some particular point of time. 
 But that matter should have- existed of itself from all 
 eternity, he holds to be impossible. " If, on the con- 
 trary," says he, " it did not exist from all eternity, it is 
 
 /difficult to understand from whence it derives its origin. 
 
 } There remains therefore but one solution of the diffi- 
 
 {culty, for which moreover we have the authority of Scrip- 
 ture, namely, that all things are of God." 
 ' Having observed that there are four kinds of causes 
 — efficient, material , formal and final, ^ he infers that all 
 these four must be in God, and consequently the original 
 substance of matter must be in him. " It was a sub- 
 stance, and derivable from no other source than from the 
 fountain of every substance, though at first confused and 
 formless, being afterwards adorned and digested into 
 ^ order by the hand of God." Hence he deems it evident 
 that no created thing can be finally annihilated. 
 
 * " Causa distribuitur in causam a qua, ex qua, per quam, propter 
 quam, id est, efficientem et materiam, aut formam et finem." — Artis 
 Logicae i. 3. 
 
ON RELIGION. 175 
 
 The highest heaven, which is the throne and habita- 
 tion of God^and the heavenly powers and angels, he 
 conceives to have been brought into being at a period 
 long anterior to that of the creation of the world; but 
 " it does not follow that heaven should be eternal, nor, 
 if eternal, that it should be God ; for it was always in 
 the power of God to produce any effect he pleased, at 
 whatever time and in whatever manner seemed good 
 to him." 
 
 Having given the Scripture account of the creation of 
 man, he subjoins :— 
 
 Man having been created after this manner, it is said as a con- 
 sequence that "man became a living soul;" whence it may be in- 
 ferred — unless we had rather take the heathen writers for our 
 teachers respecting the nature of the soul — that man is a living 
 being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not com- 
 pound or separable ; not, according to the common opinion, made 
 up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of soul 
 and body, but that the whole man is soul and the soul man ; that 
 is to say, a body or substance individual, animated, sensitive, and 
 rational ; and that the breath of life was neither a part of the 
 divine essence, nor the soul itself, but as it were an inspiration of 
 some divine virtue, fitted for the exercise of life and reason, and 
 infused into the organic body ; for man himself, the whole man, 
 when finally' created, is called in express terms a living soul. 
 
 God having completed his whole work of Creation and 
 rested on the seventh day, " it would seem therefore that7 
 the human soul is not created daily by the immediate act ^ 
 of God, but propagated from father to son in a naturalr 
 order." He shows this to have been the opinion of Ter- 
 tullian, Augustine, and of the whole Western Church in 
 the time of Jerome, and enforces it by proofs drawn both 
 from revelation and reason. 
 
 With regard to the soul of Christ it will be sufficient to answer 
 that its generation was supernatural, and therefore cannot be 
 cited in the discussion of this controversy. Nevertheless even he 
 
176 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 is called tlie seed of the woman, the seed of David according to the 
 flesh, that is, undoubtedly, according to Ms human nature. 
 
 There seems therefore no reason why the soul of man should be 
 made an exception to the general law of creation. For, as has 
 been shown before, God breathed the breath of life into the other 
 living beings, and blended it so intimately with matter that the 
 propagation and production of the human form were analogous to 
 those of other forms, and the proper effect of that power which 
 had been communicated to matter by the Deity. Man being 
 formed after the image of God, it followed as a necessary conse- 
 quence that he should be endued with natural wisdom, holiness, 
 and righteousness : Gen. i. 27, 31, ii. 25 ; Eccles. vii. 29 ; Eph. iv. 
 24 ; Col. iii. 10 ; 2 Cor. iii. 18. Certainly without extraordinary 
 w"isdom he could not have given names to the whole animal crea- 
 tion with such sudden intelligence : Gen. ii. 20.* 
 
 He next treats of the providence of God, or his general 
 governance of the universe ; and here, as on the subject 
 of the Decrees of God, he again makes some futile at- 
 tempts at reconciUng foreknowledge with free-will. Thus, 
 having cited passages where God is said to produce evil, 
 he adds : — 
 
 But though in these, as well as in many other passages of the 
 Old or New Testament, God distinctly declares that it is himself 
 who impels the sinner to sin, who hardens his heart, who blinds 
 his understanding, and leads him into error ; yet on account of 
 the infinite holiness of the Deity, it is not allowable to consider 
 him as in the smallest instance the author of sin. . . . For it is 
 not the human heart in a state of innocence and purity and re- 
 pugnance to evil that is induced by him to act wickedly and deceit- 
 fully ; but after it has conceived sin and when it is about to bring 
 forth. He, in his character of sovereign disposer of all things, in- 
 clines or biasses it in this or that direction, or toward this or that 
 action, etc. 
 
 * This is one of the places where Milton followed traditional ideas. 
 The naming of the animals is not spoken of in a manner to indicate 
 its being a proof of wisdom. In fact all that is asserted respecting 
 the mind of Adam and Eve is that " they were naked and were not 
 ashamed." Yet what a structure of mental and moral perfection has 
 been raised on this foundation ! 
 
ON RELIGION. 177 
 
 Surely this is nothing but mere sophistry ! Again, 
 he says : — 
 
 There is indeed a proverb whicli says that he who is able to 
 forbid an action and forbids it not, virtually commands it. This 
 maxim is indeed binding on man as a moral precept ; but it is other- 
 wise with regard to God. When, in conformity with the language 
 of mankind, he is spoken of as instigating, where he only does not 
 prohibit evil, it does not follow that he therefore bids it, inasmuch 
 as there is no obligation by which he is bound to forbid it. 
 
 He just touches on the question of whether a limit 
 has been set to the duration of human life which is not 
 to be passed. This, he says, is clearly intimated in Job 
 xiv. 5, Ps. xc. 10, etc. ** It is evident that God, at least 
 after the fall of man* Xxmxi^^ human life to a certain 
 term, which in the progress of ages, from Adam to David, f 
 gradually became more and more contracted; so that 
 whether this term be one and the same to all, or appoint- 
 ed differently to each individual, it is in the power of no 
 one to prolong or extend its limits." God alone can 
 do so, as in the case of Hezekiah ; and men may them- 
 selves abridge it by their crimes or vices. 
 
 When treating of the next subject, The Special Go- 
 vernment of Angels, he asserts the fall of some of these 
 beings : — 
 
 Angels are either good or evil, Luke ix. 26, viii. 2 ; for it appears 
 that many of them revolted from God of their own accord before 
 the fall of man," John viii. 44. " He abode not in the truth, be- 
 cause there is no truth in him : when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh 
 of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it," 2 Pet. ii. 4. " God 
 spared not the angels that sinned," Jude 6. " The angels which 
 
 * " This seems to intimate a belief in the doctrine, held by the Fathers 
 and best divines, that if Adam had not sinned he would not have died. 
 The opinion is expressed in the same doubtful manner in a speech of 
 Baphael, Par. Lost, v. 493," note of Bp. of W. 
 
 t Hence perhaps we may infer that Milton believed Ps. xc. to be the 
 composition of David. 
 
 N 
 
178 OPINIONS OP MILTON. 
 
 kept not their first estate," 1 Jolm iii. 8. " The devil sinneth 
 from the beginning," Ps. cvi. 37. " They sacrificed unto devils." 
 
 It is interesting to remark on how slight and falla- 
 cious a foundation may be raised a doctrine which will 
 command universal assent. Eew, if any, in the time of 
 Milton had any doubt but that the evil spirits in whose 
 existence they believed had once been angels of light, 
 and were cast out of heaven for rebelling against the 
 majesty of God ; yet the whole theory was nothing more 
 than an application of the Grecian mythes of the Titans, 
 etc. to the Christian pneumatology. Of the passages 
 quo'ted above only two seem to refer to this subject. 
 Jude says, " And the angels which kept not their first 
 estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in 
 everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgement of 
 the great day y and Peter, " For if God spared not the 
 angels that sinned, but cast them down to hellCra/ora/jwo-as), 
 and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved 
 unto judgement.'' This, we may plainly see, is not in 
 accordance with the free range elsewhere ascribed to evil 
 spirits, and it marvellously resembles the Homeric and 
 Hesiodic accounts of the Titans. But the fact is, it is 
 not of what are usually regarded as devils that these 
 writers are speaking, but of " the sons of God who saw 
 the daughters of men that they were fair, and took them 
 wives of all that they chose ;" and their authority was the 
 apocryphal Book of Enoch, of which we now have a 
 translation made from the Ethiopic by the late Archbi- 
 shop Lawrence.* In this book we find the following 
 passages : — 
 
 To Michael likewise the Lord said, Go and announce his crime 
 
 * It is not impossible that the very obscure passage, 1 Pet. iii. 19, 
 may be founded also on this book. We doubt if Trvevfxara alone is ever 
 used of the spirits of men. 
 
ON RELIGION. 179 
 
 to Samyaza, and to the others who are with him who have been 
 associated with women, that they might be polluted with all their 
 impurity. And when all their sons shall be slain, when they shall 
 see the perdition of their beloved, bind them for seventy genera- 
 tions underneath the earth even to the day of judgement and of 
 consummation, until the judgement, the effect of which shall last 
 for ever, shall be completed. Then shall they be taken away into 
 the lowest depths of the fire in torments, and in confinement shall 
 they be shut up for ever. Immediately after this shall he, toge- 
 ther with them, burn and perish ; they shall be bound until the 
 consummation of many generations. — Chap. x. 15-17. 
 
 Then the Lord said unto me, Enoch, scribe of righteousness, go 
 tell the watchers of heaven, who have deserted the lofty sky and 
 their holy, everlasting station . . . — Chap. xii. 15. 
 
 We may see how accurately these passages accord 
 with those in the Epistles of Peter and Jude. 
 
 Milton next treats of man before the Fall. The tree 
 of knowledge, he says, was not a sacrament, as it was 
 usual to call it, but " a symbol of eternal life, or rather 
 perhaps the nutriment by which that hfe is sustained." 
 The prohibition to eat of it was not, as it was termed, 
 a covenant of works ; for no works were required of 
 Adam. Moreover there was no necessity of binding a 
 being, naturally just and holy as man was, to perform 
 that to which he was of himself inclined, nor would he 
 have given any proof of obedience by the performance of 
 works to which he was led by a natural impulse inde- 
 pendently of the divine command. An act therefore, in I 
 itself indifferent, was selected as the test of obedience. 
 
 Of the Sabbath he says, that " it is clear that God 
 hallowed it to himself and dedicated it to rest in remem- 
 brance of the consummation of his work ;" but as Scrip- 
 ture is silent on the subject, he doubts if any knowledge 
 of it was given to Adam, or to any one previous to the de- 
 livery of the Law on Mount Sinai. He gives it as his 
 
 N 2 
 
180 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 opinion that "the most probable supposition is that 
 Moses, who seems to have written the Book of Genesis 
 much later than the promulgation of the law, inserted 
 this sentence from the fourth commandment into what 
 appeared a suitable place for it ; where an opportunity 
 was afforded for reminding the Israelites, by a natural and 
 easy transition, of the reason assigned by God, many ages 
 after the event itself, for his command with regard to the 
 observance of the Sabbath by the covenanted people." 
 
 From various places of the Prophets he infers that the 
 Israelites had not previously ever heard of the Sabbath. 
 
 Marriage, as having been instituted before the Eall, 
 next conies under consideration. Here he commences 
 by asserting the lawfulness of polygamy, as having been 
 practised by the holy men of old, as Abraham, Jacob, 
 David, with the approbation of God, who even " in an 
 allegorical fiction" (Ezek. xxiii. 4) " represents himself as 
 having espoused two wives, Aholah and Aholibah : a 
 mode of speaking which he would by no means have 
 employed, especially at such length, even in a parable, 
 nor indeed have taken upon him such a character at all, 
 if the practice which it implied had been intrinsically 
 dishonourable or shameful." He then answers, and with- 
 out difficulty, all the arguments against polygamy drawn 
 from either the Old or the New Testaments. 
 
 On what grounds can a practice be considered dishonourable or 
 shameful which is prohibited to no one even under the Gospel ? 
 for that dispensation annuls none of the merely civil regulations 
 "which existed previous to its introduction. It is only enjoined 
 that elders and deacons should be chosen from such as were hus- 
 bands of one wife : 1 Tim. iii. 2 ; Tit. i. 6. This implies, not that to 
 be the husband of more than one wife would be a sin, for in that 
 case the restriction would have been equally imposed on all ; but 
 that in proportion as they were less entangled in domestic affairs, 
 
ON RELIGION. 181 
 
 they would be more at leisure for the business of the Church, 
 Since therefore polygamy is interdicted in this passage to the mi- 
 nisters of the Church alone, and that not on account of any sin- 
 fulness in the practice, and since none of the other members 
 are precluded from it either here or elsewhere, it follows that it 
 was permitted, as aforesaid, to all the remaining members of the 
 Church, and that it was adopted by many without offence. 
 
 Here then we have the deliberate opinion of Milton, a 
 man eminent for purity and holiness of life, that poly- 
 gamy is permitted by the law of Christ, and may be prac- 
 tised by Christians with innocence. Can any stronger 
 proof be required of the danger of the theory of Plenary 
 Inspiration, — of that of placing the Old and the New 
 Testament on a level in respect of authority, and of re- 
 garding the Scriptures as a perfect and ample code of 
 morals ?" Polygamy did prevail under the law, and most 
 certainly it is not prohibited by the Gospel.* The same 
 is the case with slavery ; and we know that in the United 
 States many teachers of religion dare to defend it on the 
 very same principle as Milton here defends polygamy, 
 namely, by neglecting the spirit and adhering to the mere 
 letter of Scripture, and assuming that what is not ex- 
 pressly condemned is tacitly permitted. But the perfect 
 law of love and the common feelings of human nature 
 alike condemn it as repugnant to justice and to Chris- 
 tianity, f So also with polygamy : it is only in the East, 
 
 * " As for myself," says Luther, " I avow that I cannot set myself in 
 opposition to men's marrying several wives, or assert that such a course 
 is repugnant to the Holy Scripture." 
 
 t It is remarkable that Milton is silent on the subject of slavery. It 
 was however but little known of in England in his time, and the use of 
 the word servant for slave in our translation concealed its appearance 
 in the Bible. At all events it has always been mild in the East. But 
 had he lived to see this " mystery of iniquity" in its ftdl development 
 in the United States, how trumpet-tongued would he have been in de- 
 nouncing it ! There the institution of breeding-states has been devised; 
 
182 OPINIONS OP MILTON. 
 
 where man is despotic in both, public and private life, that 
 one man is permitted to engross many women. Where 
 freedom prevails, as in ancient and modern Europe, the 
 rights of the female sex are respected. Besides, all sta- 
 tistics prove that the union of one man with one woman 
 is the law of nature, for the excess of births is on the 
 side of the males. Indeed, though Milton shows that 
 it is no necessary consequence, the same rule seems very 
 plainly to be intimated in the Scripture account of the 
 origin of human society. 
 
 It is strange how it could have escaped the penetration 
 of Milton, that the passages he quotes from the Epistles 
 to Timothy and Titus prove nothing in favour of his 
 theory ; for it is said in the former, " Let not a widow be 
 taken into the number under threescore years old, hav- 
 ing been the wife of one man ;" and surely, if the former 
 passages favour polygamy, this is quite as strong in fa- 
 vour of polyandry. But the truth is, there was no such 
 thing as polygamy known at that time among either 
 Jews or Greeks. It had been no doubt practised in old 
 times by the former, but after their return from the 
 Captivity they seem to have given it up ; and it is only 
 
 there, instead of seeking to diminisli tlie evil by making free those who 
 had any admixture of white blood, they are held to be slaves as long as 
 any admixture of black blood can be traced ; there education and even 
 religion is witliheld from the slave ; there, instead of seeking to limit 
 the extent of slavery, every effort is made to spread it over new re- 
 gions ; there, in the Atlantic cities of New York and Baltimore, are to 
 be found the merchants and shipbuilders, without whose aid the African 
 slave-trade would have ceased many years ago. We hold it to be the 
 duty of every one, however humble and obscure, to raise his voice in 
 condemnation of this iniquity of iniquities ; and we firmly believe, if 
 there be truth in history, that it will yet bring down on the United 
 States the vengeance of Heaven. How it is to be deplored that Eng- 
 land, by her purchase of the produce of slave-labour, should be, though 
 involuntarily, an upholder of slavery ! 
 
ON RELIGION. 183 
 
 in the cases of the lawless, self-willed despot Herod, who 
 had nine wives,* that we meet with an instance of it. 
 As Islam limits the number of wives to four, so the 
 custom of Israel seems, except in the case of kings and 
 rulers, to have limited it to two ; for from the antedi- 
 luvian Lamech down, we do not find any polygamist to 
 have exceeded that number. This too explains the pre- 
 cept about marrying a wife's sister. f It simply means, 
 if you propose taking a second wife, choose a stranger 
 rather than a sister of your present wife, experience hav- 
 ing shown perhaps that sisters were less likely to live in 
 harmony than those w^ho were not related. 
 
 In marriage, the requisites, as Milton deduces them 
 from Scripture, are consent of parties, and that free and 
 unbiassed; consent of parents, unity of sentiment on re- 
 ligion, freedom from the degrees of affinity specified in 
 the Levitical law. " Marriage," says he, " is honourable 
 in itself, and prohibited to no order of men ; wherefore 
 the Papists act contrary to rehgion in excluding the mi- 
 nisters of the Church from this rite/' At the same time 
 it " is not a command binding on all, but only on those 
 who are unable to live with chasjtity out of this state." 
 
 By natural consequence the subject next treated of is 
 divorce, or the dissolution of the nuptial tie, — a sub- 
 ject on which, many years before the composition of this 
 treatise, Milton had thought long and written much. 
 
 * See Joseph. Ant. xvii. 1. 
 
 t The directions given in Leviticus were precepts rather than laws, 
 and so some of them seem not to have been very strictly observed. 
 One was not to marry a half-sister; and yet we may see from the words 
 of Tamar to Amnon (2 Sam. xiii. 13) that in the time of David such a 
 union might take place, in Israel as in Attica. Besides, Abraham was 
 the ideal of moral perfection in the eyes of an Israehte, and he and 
 Sarah were thus related ; so also Jacob was married to two sisters. 
 
184 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 The general, and indeed we might say natural, supposi- 
 tion was that his opinions on the subject were biassed 
 by his own circumstances ; but this work proves, as the 
 Bishop of Winchester justly observes, that though those 
 circumstances may have first drawn his attention to the 
 subject, " his sentiments respecting divorce were delibe- 
 rately conceived, and that the treatises which he printed 
 during his lifetime were not merely intended to serve 
 a temporary purpose in which he was personally inter- 
 ested." 
 
 In his early treatises, Milton, his feelings being deeply 
 engaged, and the prejudices of the world against which 
 he had to contend strong and nearly inflexible, had to 
 present the subject under every point of view, to use 
 every argument, obviate every objection. Hence he was 
 copious, elaborate, and at times declamatory. But here, 
 where he was only simply recording his own convictions, 
 not seeking to persuade others, he is dispassionate, calm, 
 and brief. He saw that the whole Scriptural argument 
 (with which alone he had to do) for the indissolubility of 
 marriage rested on the saying of our Lord, that fornica- 
 tion alone on the part of the woman justified its dissolu- 
 tion. His task then was to show that the words of our 
 Lord did not necessarily bear the sense that was put on 
 them. 
 
 " They two shall be one flesh" does not imply that marriage is 
 absolutely indissoluble, but only that it ought not to be lightly 
 dissolved. It in reality only expresses a fact, " What God hath 
 joined together let no man put asunder." What it is that Grod 
 has joined together, the institution of marriage itself declares. 
 God has joined only what admits of union, — what is suitable, what 
 is good, what is honourable ; he has not made provision for un- 
 natural and monstrous associations, pregnant only with dishonour, 
 with misery, with hatred, and with calamity. Tt is not God who 
 
ON RELIGION. 185 
 
 forms sucli unions, but violence or rashness or error, or the in- 
 fluence of some evil genius. Why then should it be unlawful to 
 deliver ourselves from so pressing an intestine evil ? Further, our 
 doctrine does not separate those whom G-od has joined together in 
 the spirit of his sacred institution, but only those whom God him- 
 self separated by the authority of his equally sacred law ; — an au- 
 thority which ought to have the same force with us now as with 
 his people of old.* . . . Fornication signifies not adultery only, but 
 either what is called any unclean thing, or a defect in some par- 
 ticular which might justly be required in a wife ; Deut. xxiv. 1 ; 
 . . . or it signifies whatever is found to be irreconcilably at vari- 
 ance with love or fidelity or help or society, — that is, with the 
 objects of the original institution ; as Selden proves, and as I have 
 myself shown in another treatise from several texts of Scripture. 
 
 He quotes the passage, Judges xix. 2, " His concubine 
 played the whore against him," " not by committing adul- 
 tery, for in that case she would not have dared to flee to 
 her father's house, but by refractory behaviour toward 
 her husband." He also refers to St. Paul's opinion given 
 to the Corinthians, that the departure of one party from 
 the other (which he regards as coming under his defini- 
 tion of fornication) was a dissolution of the marriage. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Christ would expunge from the 
 Mosaic law any enactment which could afford scope for the exercise 
 of mercy toward the wretched and afflicted ;*or that his declara- 
 tion on the present occasion was intended to have the force of a 
 judicial decree ordaining new and severer regulations on the sub- 
 ject ; but that having exposed the abuses of the law, he proceeded, 
 after his usual manner, to lay down a more perfect rule of con- 
 duct, disclaiming on this as on all other occasions the office of a 
 judge, and inculcating truth by simple admonition, not by com- 
 pulsory decrees. It is therefore a most flagrant error to convert a 
 Gospel precept into a civil statute, and enforce it by legal penalties. 
 
 Nothing can be more just than these observations : 
 they give the true conception which we should form of 
 
 * Yet we shaU find him by-and-by maintaining that the whole 
 Mosaic Law, even the Decalogue included, was abrogated. 
 
186 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 the various expressions of our Lord, which, if taken ri- 
 gorously in the Hteral sense, would produce, as they but 
 too often have done, the most injurious consequences. 
 It was no part of our Lord's office to give particular 
 laws and regulations. He laid down the one great rule 
 of charity, or love of our kind, by which our conduct 
 should be guided ; and to human reason was left the task 
 of devising civil regulations in conformity with this rule. 
 The question then with respect to divorce is, how far and 
 under what limitations it may conduce to human happi- 
 ness. Marriage is in reality, though the Church of Rome 
 maintains the contrary, only a civil contract, and there- 
 fore may, by natural equity, be dissolved by the consent 
 of the parties ; but in all countries the civil law steps in 
 to regulate it. In Roman Catholic countries it is held 
 to be a religious engagement, and therefore indissoluble, 
 and the consequence is a general disregard of its duties ; 
 in Lutheran countries divorce is permitted under almost 
 any pretext, and the result does not appear favourable 
 to the cause of good order and morality ; in England it 
 is only permitted in case of adultery on the part of the 
 woman, and the remedy is made so expensive that it is 
 in fact attainable only by the wealthy. A modification 
 of the law on this subject seems therefore desirable. 
 There are no doubt other cases beside adultery, such as 
 that of causeless and obstinate desertion, which might 
 justify a dissolution of the nuptial tie; but the matter is 
 extremely delicate, and much depends upon national cha- 
 racter and feeling ; so that no one can venture accurately 
 to foretell what the effects of any change might be, and 
 all legislation on the subject could be only tentative. 
 
 The Fall of man and the introduction of sin into the 
 world come next vmder consideration. The sin which is 
 
ON RELIGION. 187 
 
 common to all men, i. e. original sin,* " originated," he 
 says, " first, in the instigation of the devil, as is clear 
 from the narrative in Gen. iii., and from 1 John iii. 8 : ' He 
 that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth 
 from the beginning/ Secondly, in the liability to fall 
 with which man was created, whereby he, as the devil 
 had done before him, ' abode not in the truth,' John viii. 
 44 ; nor ' kept his first estate, but left his own habita- 
 tion,' Jude 6." He then proceeds rather sophistically 
 to show how this act was a transgression of the whole 
 law, as it contained in it all vices and evil deeds. In 
 this transgression the whole future race of man must 
 have shared, since all partake of the penalty. This he 
 shows to be in conformity with the divine proceedings, 
 and a principle " recognized by all nations and under all 
 religions from the earliest period." The punishment of 
 all for this one transgression is death, respecting which 
 he agrees with those divines who enumerate four degrees 
 of death, namely — first, all those evils which lead to it, 
 and which came into the world with the fall of man ; 
 secondly, spiritual death, or "the loss of divine grace 
 and of that innate righteousness wherein man in the 
 beginning lived unto God;" thirdly, the death of the 
 body, that is, according to his view, of the entire man ; 
 fourthly, "death eternal, the punishment of the damned." 
 To this last however the penalty of Adam does not ex- 
 
 * Milton would appear to liave objected to the phrase " original sin," 
 which occurs only once in Paradise Lost (ix. 1003). He says, as is we 
 believe the truth, that it was first used by Augustine. The Bishop of 
 Winchester (p. 267) quotes a passage from Cyprian in which it occurs ; 
 but the writings of that Father, as is well known, had been tampered 
 with. " Evil concupiscence," says Milton, " is that of which our original 
 parents were first guilty, and which they transmitted to their posterity, 
 as sharers in the primary transgression, in the shape of an innate pro- 
 pensity to sin." 
 
188 OPINIONS OE MILTON. 
 
 tend ;* for, as he afterwards observes, it is only menaced 
 to those who shall not believe, and " by unbelievers those 
 only can be meant to whom Christ had been announced 
 in the Gospel ; for ' how shall they believe in him of 
 whom they have not heard ?' Rom. x. 14." In Milton's 
 view therefore, man, soul and body, after undergoing the 
 toils and sufferings of this mortal life, sinks into a sleep 
 which would be perpetual, i. e. what is regarded as an- 
 nihilation, had it not been for the restoration effected by 
 the Son, of which he next proceeds to treat. 
 
 This restoration comprises redemption and renovation. 
 The former was effected by Christ at the price of his own 
 blood, by his own voluntary act, in conformity with the 
 eternal counsel and grace of God the Father. In Christ's 
 character as Redeemer are to be considered his nature 
 and office ; the former of which, according to the views 
 of the writer, having been already shown, the mystery, 
 as it is frequently termed in Scripture, of his Incarna- 
 tion comes next to be considered; and Milton com- 
 mences this subject with the following just and Christian 
 observations : — 
 
 Since tlieii this mystery is so great, we are admonished by that 
 very consideration not to assert anything respecting it rashly or 
 presumptuously on mere grounds of philosophical reasoning ; not 
 to add to it anything of our own ; not even to adduce in its behalf 
 any passage of Scripture of which the purpose may be doubtful, 
 but to be contented with the clearest texts, however few in num- 
 ber. If we listen to such passages, and are willing to acquiesce 
 in the simple truth of Scripture unencumbered by metaphysical 
 comments, to how many prolix and preposterous arguments shall 
 
 * On this point, as on some others, he would seem to have altered 
 his views after he had composed Paradise Lost. He there says : — 
 " And now without redemption all mankind 
 Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell 
 By doom severe, had not the Son of God," etc. — iii. 222. 
 
ON RELIGION. 189 
 
 we put an end ! how mucli occasion of heresy shall we remove ! 
 how many ponderous dabblings in theology shall we cast out, 
 purging the temple of God from the contamination of their rub- 
 bish ! Nothing would be more plain and agreeable to reason, no- 
 thing more suitable to the understanding even of the meanest in- 
 dividual, than such parts of the Christian faith as are declared in 
 Scripture to be necessary for salvation, if teachers, even of the 
 Beformed Church, were as yet sufficiently impressed with the pro- 
 priety of insisting on nothing but divine authority in matters re- 
 lating to God, and of limiting themselves to the contents of the 
 sacred volume. "What is essential would easily appear, when freed 
 from the perplexities of controversy ; what is mysterious would 
 be suffered to remain inviolate, and we should be fearful of over- 
 stepping the bounds of propriety in its investigation. 
 
 Milton rejects, as Scripture is silent on the point, the" 
 doctrine of the hypostatic union, as it is termed, namely, 
 " that two natures are so combined in the one person of 
 Christ, that he has a real and perfect subsistence in the 
 one nature independently of that which properly belongs 
 to the other, insomuch that two natures are comprehended 
 in one person," i. e. that he is " perfect God and perfect / 
 man," according to the Creed. " He took upon him," says \^ 
 Zanchius, " not man, properly speaking, but the human^^ 
 nature. For the Logos, being in the womb of the Virgin, 
 assumed the human nature, by forming a body of the 
 substance of Mary, and creating at the same time a soul 
 to animate it. Moreover such was his intimate and ex- 
 clusive assumption of this nature, that it never had any 
 separate existence independent of the Logos, but did then 
 first subsist and has ever since subsisted in the Logos 
 alone." Here Milton very justly observes, that one might 
 infer that Zanchius had been an actual witness of the 
 mystery which he describes so confidently. 
 
 Milton on the other hand, among other things, main- 
 tains that " if the human nature of Christ never had any 
 
190 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 proper and independent subsistence, or if the Son did 
 not take upon him that subsistence, it would have been 
 no more possible for him to have been made very man, 
 or even to have assumed the real and perfect substance 
 or essence of man, than for the body of Christ to be pre- 
 sent in the Sacrament, without quantity or local exten- 
 sion, as the Papists assert." His final opinion is, that 
 
 there is in Christ a mutual hypostatic union of two 
 latures, i. e. of two essences, of two substances, and con- 
 sequently of two persons ; nor does this union prevent 
 the respective properties of each from remaining indivi- 
 iually distinct. That the fact is so is sufficiently cer- 
 :ain : the mode of union is unknown to us ; and it is 
 best to be ignorant of what God wills should remain un- 
 Lknown." 
 
 In treating of the mediatorial office of Christ, when he 
 
 )mes to speak of his death Milton expresses his behef 
 [hat this extended to his divine nature also. '' Por not 
 
 few passages of Scripture," says he, " intimate that his 
 divine nature was subjected to death conjointly with his 
 human : passages too clear to be explained away by the 
 supposition of idiomatic language." 
 
 The satisfaction of Christ consisted in his fulfilHng the 
 law by perfect love to God and his neighbour, until the 
 time when he laid down his life for his brethren, and in 
 his paying " the required price for \i. e. instead of] all 
 mankind." After citing the passages which support this 
 last view, he subjoins : " It is in vain that the evidence 
 of these texts is endeavoured to be evaded by those who 
 maintain that Christ died, not in our stead and for our 
 redemption, but merely for our advantage in the abstract, 
 A N and as an example to mankind." He then triumphantly 
 ^ proves, in opposition to the Calvinists, that this satisfac- 
 
ON RELIGION. 191 
 
 tion was made for the whole race of men, and was not;3f ^ 
 confined to the Elect. ^ ^ 
 
 Regeneration, as defined by Milton, is 
 
 That change operated by the "Word and the Spirit, whereby, the 
 old man being destroyed, the inward man is regenerated by God 
 after his own image, in all the faculties of his mind, insomuch as 
 he becomes as it were a new creature, and the whole man is sanc- 
 tified, both in body and soul, for the service of Grod and the per- 
 formance of good works. 
 
 The effects of regeneration are repentance and faith : — 
 
 The ultimate object of faith is not Christ the Mediator, but Grod 
 the Father : a truth which the weight of Scripture evidence has 
 compelled divines to acknowledge. For the same reason it ought 
 not to appear wonderful if many, both Jews and others who lived 
 before Christ, and many also who have lived since his time, but 
 to whom he has never been revealed, should be saved by faith in 
 God alone ; still however, through the sole merits of Christ, inas- 
 much as he was given and slain from the beginning of the world, 
 even for those to whom he was not known, provided they believed 
 in God the Father. Hence honourable testimony is borne to the 
 faith of the illustrious patriarchs who lived under the law — Abel, 
 Enoch, Noah, etc., — though it is expressly stated that they believed 
 only in God. ^ 
 
 " Justification is," he says, " the gratuitous purpose of / 
 God, whereby those who are regenerate and planted in / 
 Christ are absolved from sin and death through his / 
 most perfect satisfaction, and accounted just in the sight / 
 of God, not by the works of the law, but through faith." i 
 When speaking of the satisfaction of Christ he says, ap- 
 parently on the authority of a single text (2 Cor. v. 21), 
 that our sins are imputed to Christ ; and on that of two 
 others (1 Cor. i. 30, Rom. iv. 6), that "the merits or 
 righteousness of Christ are imputed to us through faith." 
 
 As when speaking of the works of the law he terms 
 them " the works of the written law" (i. e. the Mosaic 
 
192 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 law), it is plain that Milton understood them in this 
 sense in ^ the large quotations which he makes on the 
 subject from St. PauFs Epistles, and hence he finds no 
 difficulty in reconciling St. Paul and St. James : the for- 
 mer, as he says, speaking of the works of the law {i. e. 
 the written law); the latter, of those which spring from a 
 lively faith : — 
 
 The Apostles who treat this point of our religion with particular 
 attention, nowhere, in summing up their doctrine, use words im- 
 plying that a man is justified by faith alone, but generally conclude 
 as follows, that " a man is justified by faith without the deeds of 
 the law." .... Hence we are justified by faith without the 
 works of the law, but not without the works of faith ; inasmuch 
 as a living and true faith cannot consist without works, though 
 the latter may differ from the works of the written law. 
 
 On the subjects of Assurance and Pinal Perseverance 
 Milton held with the Remonstrant, in opposition to the 
 Calvinist divines, that they were conditional, and that 
 the elect might fall away for ever.* 
 
 The Law of God is either unwritten or written. The 
 Former is what is called the Law of Nature, given ori- 
 ginally to Adam, and of which " a certain remnant or 
 imperfect illumination still dwells in the heart of all man- 
 kind ; which in the regenerate, under the influence of the 
 Holy Spirit, is daily tending toward a renewal of its 
 primitive brightness." 
 
 The written law is twofold — the Mosaic Law and the 
 Gospel : — 
 
 * Eeferring on this occasion to an argument of the Calvinists from 
 1 John iii. 9, he says : " We are not at liberty thus to separate a parti- 
 cular verse from its context without carefully comparing its meaning 
 with other verses of the same chapter and epistle, as well as with texts 
 bearing on the same subject in other parts of Scripture, lest the Apostle 
 should be made to contradict either himself or the other sacred writers." 
 ^P. 396. 
 
ON RELIGION. 193 
 
 The Mosaic law was a written code, consisting of many precepts, 
 intended for the Israelites alone, with a promise of [temporal'] life 
 to such as should keep them, and a curse on such as should be dis- 
 obedient ; to the end that they being led thereby to an acknow- 
 ledgment of the depravity of mankind, and consequently of their 
 own, might have recourse to the righteousness of the promised 
 Saviour, and that they, and in process of time all other nations, 
 might be led, under the Gospel, from the weak and servile rudi- 
 ments of this elementary institution to the full strength of the 
 new creature and a manly liberty worthy the sons of God. 
 
 The Gospel is the new dispensation of the covenant of grace, far 
 more excellent and perfect than the Law, announced first obscurely 
 by Moses and the Prophets, afterwards in the clearest terms by 
 Christ himself and his Apostles and Evangelists, written since by 
 the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, and ordained to continue 
 even to the end of the world, containing a promise of eternal life 
 to all in all nations who shall believe in Christ when revealed to 
 them, and a threat of eternal death to such as shall not believe. 
 
 On the introduction of the Gospel or new covenant through 
 faith in Christ, the w^hole of the preceding covenant, — in other 
 words, the entire Mosaic law, — was abolished. . . . "We are there- 
 fore absolved from subjection to the Decalogue as fully as to the 
 rest of the Law. 
 
 This last position he proves with great copiousness and 
 force of argument. But he subjoins : — 
 
 It appears therefore, as well from the evidence of Scripture as -> 
 from the arguments above adduced, that the whole of the Mosaic 7.^ 
 law is abolished by the Gospel. It is to be observed however- 
 that the sum and essence of the Law is not hereby abrogated, its 
 purpose being attained in that love of God and our neighbour ) 
 which is born of the Spirit through faith. It was with justice ) 
 therefore that Christ asserted the permanence of the Law. Matt. ^ 
 V. 17 ; Eom. iii. 31, viii. 4. 
 
 The sacraments,* or outward signs of the sealing of 
 
 * It is rather remarkable that Milton should have retained this term, 
 which is only to be found in the Fathers. It was the application to 
 Christianity of the Roman sacramentum, or military oath, and therefore 
 properly belongs only to baptism. This view of it is given in our Bap- 
 tismal Service. 
 
 O 
 
#4 
 
 "./ 
 
 194 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 the covenant, come next under consideration. These 
 under the Law, he says, were two — Circumcision and the 
 
 ^Passover ; under the Gospel they are two also — Baptism 
 
 )and the Lord's Supper : — 
 
 Baptism is that rite wherein the bodies of believers who engage 
 themselves to pureness of life are immersed in running water, to 
 signify their regeneration by the Holy Spirit and their union with 
 Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. 
 
 Hence it follows that infants are not to be baptized, inasmuch 
 as they are incompetent to receive instruction or to believe, or to 
 enter into a covenant, or to promise or answer for themselves, or 
 even to hear the word. Yov how can infants, who understand not 
 the word, be purified thereby, any more than adults can receive 
 edification by hearing an unknown language ? Tor it is not the 
 outward baptism, which purifies only the filth of the flesh, that 
 saves us, but "the answer of a good conscience," as Peter testi- 
 fies ; of which infants are incapable. Besides, baptism is not 
 merely a covenant containing a certain stipulation on one side, 
 with a corresponding engagement on the other, which in the case 
 of an infant is impossible, but it is also a vow, and as such can 
 neither be pronounced by infants nor required of them. 
 
 He then, in his wonted manner, discusses and refutes 
 the " futile arguments," as he terms them, of those who 
 maintain the contrary opinion. In this he had an easy 
 task, for few will venture to deny that infant baptism 
 rests entirely on the authority and practice of the 
 Church. 
 
 We have seen that Milton holds immersion, and even 
 that in running water, to be essential to baptism. The 
 passages (Mark vii. 4, Luke xi. 38) quoted to prove that 
 to dip and to sprinkle mean the same thing, do not so, 
 he says, by any means, " since in washing we do not 
 sprinkle the hands, but immerse them."* Observing 
 
 * Yet surely the jailor at Phihppi and his family could hardly have 
 been baptized in a running stream, or indeed, we may almost say, by 
 immersion at aU. 
 
ON RELIGION. 195 
 
 that the Apostles and many others seem to have rested in 
 the baptism of John, he proceeds to say : — 
 
 According to whicli analogy I should be inclined to conclude 
 that those persons who have been baptized while yet infants, and 
 perhaps in other respects irregularly, have no need of second bap- 
 tism when arrived at maturity.* Indeed I should be disposed to 
 consider baptism itself as necessary for proselytes only, and not 
 for those born in the Church, had not the Apostle taught that 
 baptism is not merely an initiatory rite, but a figurative repre- 
 sentation of our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ.t * 
 
 The Lord's Supper is [he says] a solemnity in which the death 
 of Christ is commemorated by the breaking of bread and pouring 
 out of wine, both of which elements are tasted by each indivi- 
 dual communicant, and the benefits of his death thereby sealed 
 to believers. 
 
 Among the passages of Scriptm"e adduced by Milton 
 on this subject we find a part of the sixth chapter of the 
 Gospel of St. John, but he acknowledges that it does 
 not exclusively relate to the Lord's Supper, but to the 
 participation by faith of any of the benefits of Christ's 
 incarnation. He adds more correctly — "That living 
 bread which Christ calls his flesh, and that hlood which 
 is drink indeed, can be nothing but the doctrine of Christ's 
 having become man to shed his blood for us." In fact, 
 the whole and sole object of that Gospel, — in which we 
 rarely meet with moral precepts, — seems to have been to 
 prove that Christ was the Logos who had taken flesh. 
 The bread, then, which came down from heaven was 
 the Logos, and the eating of it was the believing in the 
 
 * This was evidently Milton's own case. It would seem that he had 
 not adopted these new views respecting baptism until after the birth of 
 his children, for they must have been christened in the usual manner. 
 
 t This is but feeble reasoning, for no doctrine or practice should ever 
 be founded on figurative language. Still we can not see any vahd ob- 
 jection to infant-baptism when properly understood as a solemn rite of 
 admission into the Christian Church. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 incarnation. It does not appear that there was, or well 
 could be, any allusion to the Lord's Supper, which, ac- 
 cording to this Gospel, was not instituted till a year 
 afterwards, and of the institution of which it gives no 
 account. 
 
 Consubstantiation, and above all tbe papistical doctrine of tran- 
 substantiation — or rather anthropophagy, for it deserves no better 
 name — are irreconcilable not only with reason and common sense 
 and the habits of mankind, but with the testimony of Scripture, 
 with the nature and end of a sacrament, with the analogy of bap- 
 tism, with the ordinary forms of language, with the human nature 
 of Christ, and finally with the state of glory in which he is to re- 
 main till the day of judgement. 
 
 As great stress is laid by the advocates for that mon- 
 strous doctrine on the words " this is my body," he quotes 
 numerous passages from Scripture where a thing is said 
 to be what it represents. Such are " It (^. e. the lamb) 
 is the Lord's passover," Exod. xii. 11 ; "Is not this {i, e. 
 the water) the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of 
 their lives-?" 2 Sam. xxiii. 17 ; "That rock was Christ," 
 1 Cor. X. 4 ; " The seven kine are seven years," Gen. xli. 
 27 ; " The seven heads are seven mountains," Rev. xvii. 
 9; "The ten horns are ten kings," ib. 12. In fact 
 there is hardly a language on the face of the earth that 
 does not employ this most simple figure. Do not we 
 ourselves say in looking at a portrait. That is such-a-one ? 
 Even in the plays of little children we may observe the 
 frequent use of this metaphor.* Yet we see what a 
 structure of priestly domination Rome has reared on it ! 
 
 Sacraments, in the opinion of Milton, are not abso- 
 
 * "This shoe," says Launce, "is my father . . . this shoe is my 
 mother . . . this staff is my sister . . . this hat is Nan, our maid ; I 
 am the dog," etc. — Two Grent. of Yerona, ii. 3. We trust we shall not 
 be accused of levity in quoting this passage ; our object is to show the 
 universality and famiharity of this mode of speech. 
 
ON RELIGION. 197 
 
 lutely indispensable, for many have been saved without 
 participating in them ; and the seal does not constitute 
 the covenant, but is only an evidence of it. "Assuredly," 
 says he, " if a sacrament be nothing more than what it 
 is defined, a seal or visible representation of God's bene- 
 fits to us, he cannot be wrong who reposes the same faith 
 in God's promises without as with this confirmation, in 
 cases where it is not possible for him to receive it duly 
 and conveniently; especially as so many opportunities 
 are open to him through life of evincing his gratitude to 
 God and commemorating the death of Christ, though 
 not in the precise mode and form which God had insti- 
 tuted."* 
 
 As it is nowhere said in Scripture that the Lord's Sup- 
 per was administered by an appointed minister, Milton 
 knows " no reason why ministers refuse to permit the 
 celebration of it except when they themselves are allowed 
 to administer it." To the argument from the example 
 of Christ he replies that it is not said that he gave it to 
 each person individually, and besides he was acting in 
 the character of an institutor, not of a minister. To that 
 from 1 Cor. iv. 1, where St. Paul seems to speak of him- 
 self and others as " ministers and stewards of the mys- 
 teries of God," he replies by showing that the mysteries 
 in question were doctrines and not sacraments. From 
 the analogy of the passover he concludes " that the mas- 
 ter of a family, or any one appointed by him, is at liberty 
 to celebrate the Lord's Supper from house to house, as 
 was done in the dispensation of the passover ; if indeed 
 we are to suppose that any distribution of the elements 
 by an individual officiator was then or is now requisite." 
 
 The Mass of the Papists differs fi'om the Lord's Supper in several 
 respects. In the first place, the one is an ordinance of our Lord, 
 
 * Here again Milton had his own case in view. 
 
198 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 the other an institution of the Pope. Secondly, the Lord's Supper 
 is celebrated in remembrance of Christ once offered, which offering 
 he himself made by virtue of his own peculiar priesthood ; whereas 
 in the mass the offering itself is supposed to be repeated daily, 
 and that by innumerable petty priests at the same point of time. 
 Thirdly, Christ offered himself not at the Holy Supper, but on the 
 cross ; whereas it is in the mass that the pretended daily sacrifice 
 takes place. Fourthly, in the Lord's Supper the real body of the 
 ving Lord, made of the Yirgin Mary, was personally present ; in 
 he mass, by the mere muttering of the four mystical words, this 
 is my hody, it is supposed to be created out of the substance of 
 he bread at some given moment, for the sole purpose of being 
 broken in pieces as soon as created. Fifthly, in the Lord's Supper 
 the bread and wine, after consecration, remain unchanged in sub- 
 stance as in name ; in the mass, if we believe the Papists, although 
 the outward appearance remains the same, they are converted by 
 k a sudden metamorphosis into the body of our Lord. Sixthly, in 
 the Lord's Supper, according to the original institution, all the 
 communicants drink of the cup ; in the mass, the cup is refused to 
 the laity. Lastly, in the mass, the sacred body of Christ, after 
 having completed its appointed course of hardship and suffering, 
 is dragged back from its state of exaltation at the right-hand of 
 the Father to a condition even more wretched and degrading than 
 before ; it is again exposed to be broken and crushed and bruised 
 by the teeth not only of men but of brutes ; till having passed 
 through the whole process of digestion, it is cast out at length 
 into the draught, — a profanation too horrible to be alluded to 
 without shuddering. 
 
 Surely if men's minds were not wilfully and obstinately 
 closed against the access of reason and truth, what is 
 here stated ought to produce perfect conviction of the 
 falsehood of the Romish doctrine. 
 
 Confirmation, or the imposition of hands, "though the 
 Church rejects it as a sacrament, she retains it with great 
 propriety and advantage, as a symbol of blessing ; Heb. 
 vi. 5, 'The doctrine of baptisms and of laying on of 
 hands.' " 
 
 With regard to marriage, inasmuch as it is not an institution 
 peculiar to Christian nations, but common to all by the universal 
 
ON RELIGION. 199 
 
 law of mankind — unless it be meant to restrict the word to the 
 union of believers properly so called — it is not even a religious 
 ceremony, stiU less a sacrament, but a compact purely civil ; nor 
 does its celebration belong in any maimer to the ministers of the 
 Churcji. 
 
 He next treats of the Visible Church, arguing against 
 the Papal claims, and showing copiously that Peter had 
 no superiority whatever over the other Apostles, and that 
 even if he had we have no proof that his authority was 
 continued to his successors, or that these are the Roman 
 pontiffs. "The universal visible church is the whole 
 multitude of those who are called in every part of the 
 world, and who openly worship God the Father through 
 Christ, in any place whatever, either individually^ or in 
 conjunction with others." He inserts the term indivi- 
 dually in this definition, he says, because " although it is 
 the duty of believers to join themselves, if possible, to 
 a church duly constituted, Heb. x. 25, yet such as can- 
 not do this conveniently, or with full satisfaction of con- 
 science, are not to be considered as excluded from the 
 blessing bestowed by God upon the churches : 1 Kings 
 xix. 10, 14 ; John iv. 23 ; 1 Cor. i. 1 ; 2 Cor. i. 1." 
 
 The office of ministering and teaching in the Church 
 is not confined to any class or order of men. Any be- 
 liever is competent to exercise it, provided he be endowed 
 with the requisite gifts, as these constitute his mission. 
 In like manner he may administer the rite of baptism, 
 and distribute the elements at the Lord's Supper, much 
 more celebrate marriages and funerals, which are not in 
 any manner religious rites. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures are the writings of the Prophets, 
 Apostles, and Evangelists, composed under Divine inspi- 
 
 * This again was his own ease. 
 
200 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 ration. These " were not written for occasional purposes 
 only, as is the doctrine of the Papists,* but for the use 
 of the Church throughout all ages, as well under the 
 Gospel as under the Law." The use of them is prohi- 
 bited to no one; on the contrary, they are adapted for 
 the daily hearing or reading of all classes and orders. 
 "Partly by reason of their own simplicity, and partly 
 through the Divine illumination, they are plain and per- 
 spicuous in all things necessary to salvation, and adapted 
 to the instruction of even the most unlearned, through 
 the medium of diligent and constant reading." The li- 
 berty of investigating Scripture thoroughly is granted to 
 all ; but it is not " to be interpreted by the judgement of 
 men, — that is, by our own unassisted judgement, — but 
 by means of that Holy Spirit promised to all believers." 
 
 If, then, the Scriptures be in themselves so perspicuous and 
 sufficient of themselves " to make men wise unto salvation through 
 faith," and that " the man of Grod may be perfect, thoroughly fur- 
 nished with all good works," through what infatuation is it that 
 even Protestant divines persist in darkening the most momentous 
 truths of religion by intricate metaphysical comments, on the plea 
 that such explanation is necessary : stringing together all the use- 
 less technicalities and empty distinctions of scholastic barbarism, 
 for the purpose of elucidating those Scriptures which they are con- 
 tinually extoUing as models of plainness ! As if Scripture, which 
 possesses in itself the clearest light, and is sufficient for its own 
 explanation, especially in matters of faith and holiness, required to 
 have the simplicity of its divine truths more fuUy developed and 
 placed in a more distinct view by illustrations drawn from the ab- 
 strusest of human sciences, falsely so called. 
 
 For the public interpretation of Scripture however, 
 more, he acknowledges, is required, and he approves of 
 the following requisites laid down, but not always ob- 
 served, he says, by divines : — 
 
 * A doctrine liowever by no means altogether wrong. 
 
ON RELIGION. 201 
 
 Knowledge of languages ; inspection of the originals ; examina- 
 tion of the contexts ; care in distinguishing between literal and 
 figurative expressions ; considerations of cause and circumstance, 
 of antecedents and consequents ; mutual comparison of texts ; and 
 regard to the analogy of faith. Attention must also be paid to 
 the frequent anomalies of syntax ; as, for example, where the rela- 
 tive does not refer to the immediate antecedent, but to the prin- 
 cipal word in the sentence, though more remote. . . . Lastly, no 
 inferences from the text are to be admitted but such as follow ne- 
 cessarily and plainly from the words themselves ; lest we should be 
 constrained to receive what is not written for what is written, the 
 shadow for the substance, the fallacies of human reasoning for the 
 doctrines of God; for it is by the declarations of Scripture, and not 
 by the conclusions of the schools, that our consciences are bound. 
 
 Every believer has a right to interpret the Scriptures for him- 
 self, inasmuch as he has the Spirit for his guide, and the mind of 
 Christ is in him ; nay, the expositions of the public interpreter 
 can be of no use to him, except so far as they are confirmed by his 
 own conscience. 
 
 No church therefore, and much less the civil magis- 
 trate, has a right to impose its own interpretations on us 
 as laws, or to require implicit faith. 
 
 The ordinary ministers of a church are two, bishops or 
 presbyters — for he shows from various places of Scrip- 
 ture that they were the same — and deacons. The choice 
 of them belongs to the people ; and they should undergo 
 a trial previous to their admission. They are entitled to 
 a remuneration for their services, but it should be volun- 
 tary. 
 
 To exact or bargain for tithes or other stipendiary payments 
 under the Gospel, to extort them from the flock under the alleged 
 authority of civil edicts, or to have recourse to civil actions and 
 legal processes for the recovery of allowances purely ecclesiastical, 
 is the part of wolves rather than of ministers of the Gospel. . . . 
 If it be scarcely allowable for a Christian to go to law with his 
 adversary in defence even of his own property (Matt. v. 39, 40 ; 
 1 Cor. vi. 7), what are we to think of an ecclesiastic who for the 
 sake of tithes, i. e. of the property of others, which either as an 
 
202 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 offering made out of tlie spoils of war, or in pursuance of a vow 
 voluntarily contracted by an individual, or from an imitation of 
 that agrarian law established among the Jews, but altogether fo- 
 reign to our habits, and which is not only abolished itself, but of 
 which all the causes have ceased to operate — were due indeed 
 formerly, and to ministers of another sect, but are now due to 
 no one ; — what are we to think of a pastor who for the recovery of 
 claims thus founded — an abuse unknown to any reformed church 
 but our own — enters into litigation with his own flock, or more 
 properly speaking with a flock which is not his own ? If his own, 
 how avaricious in him to be so eager in making a gain of his holy 
 office ! if not his own, how iniquitous ! Moreover what a piece of 
 officiousness, to force his instructions on such as are unwilling to 
 receive them ! what extortion, to exact the price of teaching from 
 one who disclaims the teacher, and whom the teacher himself would 
 equally disclaim as a disciple were it not for the profit ! 
 
 To the question of how then were the teachers to live, 
 he replies : — 
 
 How ought they to live, but as the prophets and apostles lived 
 of old ? — on their own private resources, by the exercise of some 
 calling, by honest industry, after the example of the prophets, 
 who accounted it no disgrace to be able to hew their own wood 
 and build their own houses (2 Kings vi. 2) ; of Christ, who wrought 
 with his own hands as a carpenter (Mark vi. 3) ; and of Paul (Acts 
 xviii. 3, 4), to whom the plea, so importunately urged in modern 
 times, of the expensiveness of a liberal education and the neces- 
 sity that it should be repaid out of the wages of the Gospel, seems 
 never to have occurred. 
 
 We cannot refrain from making here a few observa- 
 tions. In what Milton says on the subject of tithes, it 
 is plain that he goes, like nearly all the opponents of 
 them, on the supposition that they are paid to the minis- 
 ter by his flock out of their own property. Now be the 
 policy of tithes as a mode of paying the teachers of re- 
 ligion what it may — for we enter not now into that ques- 
 tion — there is nothing more certain than that they are 
 the property of the clergy as a body, as surely as landed 
 
ON RELIGION. 203 
 
 estates are of their owners. If a man purchases an 
 estate or a house, he purchases it minus the tithes, and 
 gives so much the less for it ; if he takes a farm or a 
 house, he gives so much the less rent in consequence of 
 tlie demands of the clergy. Even in building houses or 
 reclaiming lands, the additional rent, as we may term it, 
 that will thence arise is taken into consideration. But 
 self-interest enters too much into the calculation to allow 
 men to reason calmly on the subject : the owners or the 
 tenants of lands or houses know that if they could suc- 
 ceed in abolishing tithe, etc., their own incomes would 
 be increased, and they therefore close their ears against 
 all the arguments of policy and justice. Hence, we fear, 
 arises much of the so-called conscientious resistance to 
 church-rates. It must not for a moment be supposed 
 that we even dream of imputing such low motives to 
 Milton ; we only mean that he took an erroneous view 
 of the subject. At the same time we confess that we 
 dislike the system of tithe or tithe-rentcharge, to be col- 
 lected by the minister himself, as prejudicial to the cause 
 of religion, and think that a better system might easily 
 be devised. As for Milton's plan of a self-supporting 
 ministry, a very slight knowledge of human nature will 
 suffice to show that it is perfectly Utopian.* 
 
 Each particular church consists of the ministers and 
 the people. As to the last, "only such are to be ac- 
 counted of that number as are well taught in Scripture 
 doctrine, and capable of trying by the rule of Scripture 
 and the Spirit any teacher whatever, or even the whole 
 collective body of teachers, although arrogating to them- 
 selves the exclusive name of the Church." 
 
 * He discusses the matters here noticed at length in his treatise of 
 ' The Likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church.' 
 
204 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 Every churcli consisting of the above parts, however small its 
 numbers, is to be considered as in itself an integral and perfect 
 church, so far as regards its religious rights ; nor has it any su- 
 perior on earth, whether individual, or assembly, or convention, 
 to whom it can be lawfully required to render submission ; inas- 
 much as no believer out of its pale, nor any order or council of 
 men whatever, has a greater right than itself to expect a partici- 
 pation in the written word and the promises, in the presence of 
 Christ, in the presiding influences of the Spirit, and in those 
 gracious gifts which are the reward of united prayer. 
 
 Of Councils in the modern sense, i. e. synods of bi- 
 shops or elders, who have no gift of inspiration beyond 
 other men, as he finds no traces in Scripture, he rejects 
 them unconditionally. The custom however of holding 
 assemblies, i. e. meeting together for worship and in- 
 struction, which the Apostles derived from the synagogue, 
 is, he thinks, to be maintained ; but " according to the 
 apostolical institution, which did not ordain that an in- 
 dividual, and he a stipendiary, should have the sole right 
 of speaking from a higher place, but that each believer 
 in turn should be authorized to speak, or prophesy, or 
 teach, or exhort, according to his gifts; insomuch that 
 even the weakest among the brethren had the privilege 
 of asking questions, and consulting the elders and more 
 experienced members of the congregation." Women 
 however were enjoined to keep silence in the church. 
 
 Each particular church has the power of the keys, i. e. 
 the right of administering discipline, which extends even 
 to the ejecting of members, " not however for their de- 
 struction, but rather for their preservation, if so they may 
 be induced to repent." 
 
 The civil power differs from the ecclesiastical in this — 
 that every man is subject to it, that it only has power 
 over the body and external faculties of man, and that it 
 
ON RELIGION. 205 
 
 punishes even those who confess their faults. The ec- 
 clesiastical, on the contrary, has power only over the 
 members of the church, addresses itself solely to the 
 mind, and pardons the penitent. " It is therefore highly 
 derogatory to the power of the Church, as well as an 
 utter want of faith, to suppose that her government can- 
 not be properly administered without the intervention of 
 the civil magistrate." 
 
 Having thus conducted man all through his course on 
 earth, he concludes by treating of his final glorification. 
 He enumerates the signs of the coming of Christ to 
 judgement, as they are given in the Gospels, and by St. 
 Paul; and he is inclined to agree with those who in- 
 clude among them " the calling of the entire nation of 
 the Jews, as well as of the ten dispersed tribes." 
 
 The second advent of Christ will be followed by the 
 resurrection of the dead and the last judgement. 
 
 The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, he main- 
 tains, was believed even before the time of the Gospel, 
 and it was confirmed by the testimony of Christ. In 
 proof of it, he adds to the passages of Scripture in its 
 favour, the following three arguments, he says, from rea- 
 son, but in reality from Scripture also. 1. The covenant 
 with God is not dissolved by death (Mat. xxii. 32) ; 2. If 
 there be no resurrection of the dead, Christ is not risen 
 (1 Cor. XV. 13 seq.) ; 3. " Were there no resurrection, the 
 righteous would be of all men the most miserable -, and 
 the wicked, who have a better portion in this life, most 
 happy, which would be altogether inconsistent with the 
 providence and justice of God." 
 
 We must here pause to observe that this last argument 
 is feeble, and to a certain extent untrue. It arose from 
 what we must regard as an unfortunate habit of Milton's 
 
206 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 mind — the refusing to assent to the very rational doctrine 
 of the writers of the Church of Rome, that many pas- 
 sages of Scripture only related to particular persons and 
 circumstances, and are not of universal application. In 
 the passage of St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians on 
 which he founds this assertion, the apostle was evidently 
 speaking of his own peculiar case.* But experience 
 confirms the truth of other passages of Scripture, namely, 
 that " godliness is great gain," and that it has " promise 
 of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." 
 We have only to look around us and see that though the 
 balance of worldly prosperity may not be so, that of real 
 and substantial happiness almost always is on the side 
 of the pious and virtuous portion of mankind. 
 
 As to the doctrine, not of the resurrection, but of a 
 future state of existence, there is an argument simpler 
 and stronger than any usually brought forward in its fa- 
 vour. It is this : it is utterly impossible for the human 
 mind to conceive its own non-existence, or even a pause 
 in its existence ; it would in fact be to conceive itself to 
 be and not to be at the same point of time ; for thinking 
 is our being. We can easily conceive the non-existence 
 of others, but not of ourselves, of the /, the sentient 
 thinking being ; and with others in view we can say with 
 Seneca, Mors est aut finis aut transitus ; -but with regard 
 
 * We may here observe that St. Paul was in the constant habit of 
 using the first person plural instead of the singular ; such is particularly 
 the case all through the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Thus when 
 (1 Cor. iv. 9) he says "us the apostles," he means "me the apostle," 
 just as Cicero, speaking of himself alone, says nos consules. This rhe- 
 toric plural, as it is called, occurs frequently in Euripides. Another 
 practice of St. Paul's, namely, that of joining others with him in the 
 address and then proceeding to write in his own person (singular or 
 plural), will also be found in Cicero : see his Letters to Tiro. 
 
ON RELIGION. 207 
 
 to ourselves only, Mors est transitus.^ Even when men 
 speak of their own annihilation, if their ideas are exa- 
 mined closely, it will be found that they still mean and 
 only can mean existence, but existence in a state of dark- 
 ness, silence, and solitude. Hence it is that no tribe, 
 however so rude, has ever yet been found on the face of 
 the earth without a belief in a future existence ; where 
 travellers have fancied they have discovered such, more 
 accurate inquiry has always proved that their opinion 
 was erroneous.! What then, it may be asked, was the 
 great discovery of Christianity? It was at the least 
 that this state is a state of retribution. 
 
 " It appears," says Milton, " indicated in Scripture 
 that every man will rise numerically one and the same 
 person. Otherwise we should not be conformed to Christ, 
 who entered into glory with that identical body of flesh 
 and blood wherewith he had died and risen again." In 
 this he is, we think, clearly at variance not only with 
 reason and experience, but with St. Paul himself, who 
 only says that the glorified body will originate in some 
 unknown manner from the natural one. 
 
 At his coming Christ will judge the world, and " the 
 rule of judgement will be the conscience of each indi- 
 vidual, according to the measure of light which he has 
 enjoyed." 
 
 Coincident, as it appears, with the time of this last judgement — 
 I use the indefinite term time, as the word day is often used to 
 
 * Hence the apparent discrepancy between Phil. i. 23, and those 
 places in St. Paul's Epistles in which he speaks of death as a sleep, 
 may be easily explained: he is speaking there of himself, elsewhere 
 of others. 
 
 t During the French Revolution, when it was sought to drive the 
 fears of the other world out of the hearts of men, the following in- 
 scription was put on the Pantheon : La mort est un sommeil 6terneh 
 But sleep necessarily includes the idea of waking from it. 
 
208 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 denote any given period, and as it is not easily imaginable that so 
 many myriads of men and angels should be assembled and sen- 
 tenced within a single day — beginning with its commencement 
 and extending a little beyond its conclusion, will take place that 
 glorious reign of Christ on earth with his saints, so often promised 
 in Scripture, even until all his enemies shall be subdued. . . . 
 After the end of the thousand years (se. of this reign), Satan will 
 rage again and assail the Church at the head of an immense con- 
 federacy of its enemies ;* but will be overthrown by fire from 
 heaven, and condemned to everlasting punishment. After the 
 evil angels and chief enemies of Grod have been sentenced, judge- 
 ment will be passed on the whole race of mankind. 
 
 Here we plainly have the doctrine of the Millennium, 
 or reign of Christ in glory on earth, — a doctrine which 
 must be received by those who believe in the plenary in- 
 spiration of Scripture,' unless they renounce all submission 
 to the plain rules of criticism. 
 
 Then, it appears, will be pronounced that sentence, " Come, ye 
 blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from 
 the foundation of the world ; Depart from me, ye cursed, into ever- 
 lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." The passing 
 of this sentence will be followed by its execution, and then will 
 be the end spoken of 1 Cor. xv. 24-28, when Christ is to deliver 
 up the kingdom to God. 
 
 It may be asked, if Christ is to deliver up the kingdom to Grod 
 and the Eather, what becomes of the declarations, Heb. i. 8, 
 "Unto the Son he saith. Thy throne, Grod, is for ever and ever" 
 (m scBculum sceculi, for ages of ages) ; and Dan. vii. 14, " His do- 
 minion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, 
 and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed ;" Luke i. 33, 
 " Of his kingdom there shall be no end" ? I reply, there shall be 
 no end of his kingdom for ages of ages, i. e. so long as the ages 
 of the world endure, until time itself shall he no longer, Eev. x. 6, 
 until everything which his kingdom was intended to effect shall 
 have been accomplished ; insomuch that his kingdom shall not 
 pass away as insufficient for its purpose ; it will not be destroyed, 
 
 * " The enemies of the Church are partly heretics and partly profane 
 opponents." — P. 494. 
 
ON RELIGION. 209 
 
 nor will its period be a period of dissolution, but rather of per- 
 fection and consummation, like the end of the Law : Matt. v. 18. 
 In the same manner many things are spoken of as never to pass 
 away, but to remain eternally — as circumcision, G-en. xvii. 13 ; the 
 ceremonial law in general, Lev. iii. 17, xxiv. 8 ; (the possession of) 
 the land of Canaan, Gen. xiii. 15, Jer. vii. 7, xxv. 5 ; the Sabbath, 
 Ex. xxxi. 16 ; the priesthood of Aaron, Num. xviii. 8 ; the me- 
 morial of stones at the river Jordan, Jos. iv. 7 ; the signs of 
 heaven, Ps. cxlviii. 6 ; the earth, Eccl. i. 4 ; — although every one 
 of these has either already come to an end, or will eventually be 
 terminated. 
 
 The second death — so named in reference to the first, 
 or death of the body — or punishment of the damned, 
 " seems to consist partly in the loss of the chief good, 
 namely, the favour and protection of God, and the beati- 
 fic vision of his presence, which is commonly called the 
 punishment of loss ; and partly in eternal torment, which 
 is called the punishment of sense. . . . The intensity 
 and duration of these punishments are variously esti- 
 mated. . . . Punishment however varies according to the 
 degree of guilt." 
 
 Milton supposes the place of punishment, variously 
 named, he says. Hell, Tophet, hell-fire, outer darkness, a 
 furnace of fire. Hades, a place of torment, the bottomless 
 pit, the lake of fire, the lake which burneth with fire and 
 brimstone, to be situated beyond the limits of this uni- 
 verse, i. e. the world, according to the Ptolemaic system. 
 
 Nor are reasons wanting for this locality. For as the place of 
 the damned is the same as that prepared for the devil and his 
 angels, in punishment of their apostasy,* which occurred before 
 
 * Here he is evidently in error, for Gehenna or Hell is always spoken 
 of in the New Testament, not as a place actually existing, but one 
 which was to come into being after the general judgement : Matt. v. 22, 
 29 ; xviii. 8, 9 ; xxv. 41 ; Mark ix. 43-47 ; Eev. xiv. 10 ; xx. 10, 15. 
 From these passages we might also suspect that its site would be on the 
 surface of the earth. 
 
210 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 the fall of man, it does not seem probable tbat bell should have 
 been prepared within the limits of this world, in the bowels of the 
 earth, on which the curse had not as yet passed. This is said to 
 have been the opinion of Chrysostom, and likewise of Luther and 
 some later divines. Besides, if, as has been shown from various 
 passages of the New Testament, the whole world is to be finally 
 consumed by fire, it follows that hell, being situated in the centre 
 of the earth, must share the fate of the surrounding universe and 
 perish likewise ; a consummation more to be desired than ex- 
 pected by the souls in perdition. 
 
 As Milton abstains from asserting that these punish- 
 ments will be strictly and metaphysically eternal, and has 
 SO copiously shown that that is not the sense of the scrip- 
 tural for ever and such-like terms, one may venture to 
 conjecture that he entertained the charitable opinion of 
 the prelates Tillotson and Newton, and of other pious 
 men, that these penalties would only last till they had 
 effected their object in the reformation of the criminals ; 
 and that finally, as St. Paul, who seems to have taken 
 this view also, says, God may he all in all. Surely it is 
 neither Christian charity nor sound logic to insist that 
 because words possibly may bear a particular sense, that 
 they must bear it. 
 
 Perfect glorification consists in eternal life and perfect happi- 
 ness, arising chiefly from the divine vision. ... It appears that 
 all the saints will not attain to an equal state of glory. Its place 
 will be Heaven. It will be accompanied by the renovation of 
 heaven and earth, and of all things therein, adapted to our service 
 or delight, to be possessed by us ia perpetuity. 
 
 The Second Part of Milton's treatise on the Service of 
 God is, as we have observed, a code of ethics. As it 
 does not contain much that is peculiar, we will only no- 
 tice his opinions respecting prayer, fasting, oaths, and 
 the observance of the Sabbath. 
 
 Supplication is that act whereby, under the guidance of the Holy 
 
ON RELIGION. 211 
 
 Spirit, we reverently ask of God things lawful either for ourselves 
 or others through faith in Christ. 
 
 The Lord's Prayer was intended rather as a model of supplica- 
 tion than as a form to be repeated verbatim by the Apostles or by 
 Christian churches of the present day. Hence the superfluous- 
 ness of set forms of worship ; seeing that with Christ for our 
 master and the Holy Spirit for our assistant in prayer, we can have 
 no need of any human aid in either respect. 
 
 Prayer may be offered alone or in company. Christ appears 
 seldom to have prayed in conjunction with his disciples, or even 
 in their presence, but either wholly alone or at some distance from 
 them. It is moreover evident that the precepts (Matt, vi.) have 
 reference to private prayer alone. When however he inculcated 
 on his disciples the duty of prayer in general, he gave no specific 
 direction whether they should pray alone or with others. It is 
 certain that they were in the frequent practice of praying in as- 
 semblies, and that either individually, each framing within himself 
 his own particular petition relative to some subject on which they 
 had agreed in common (Matt, xviii. 19), or by the mouth of one 
 chosen from their number, who spoke in the name of the rest ; 
 both which modes of prayer appear to have been used indiscrimi- 
 nately by the primitive Christians. 
 
 No particular posture is enjoined for prayer. The 
 deportment in it should be suited to the manners of the 
 time. Thus in St. Paul's time men prayed and pro- 
 phesied [i.e. preached] with the head uncovered. Now, 
 on the contrary, since the covering of the head has 
 become a token of authority, and the uncovering of it of 
 submission, it is the custom with most churches, espe- 
 cially those of Europe, in compliance not so much with 
 the letter as with the spirit of the law (which is always to 
 be preferred), to worship God uncovered, as being the 
 mark of reverence prescribed by modern custom ; but to 
 prophesy covered, in token of the authority with which 
 the speaker is invested, and likewise to listen to his in- 
 structions covered, as the deportments most emblematic, 
 
 p 2 
 
212 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 " according to modern ideas, of our freedom and matu- 
 rity as sons of God/* 
 
 We are even commanded to call down curses on tlie enemies of 
 G-od and the Churcli ; as also on false brethren, and on such as 
 are guilty of any grievous offence against Grod, or even against 
 ourselves. The same may be lawfully done in private prayer, after 
 the example of the holiest of men. 
 
 Here again we may observe the unfortunate results of 
 placing the Old and New Testaments on a line, for nearly 
 all his authorities are taken from the former. Surely 
 if, as he maintains, the whole of the Law was abrogated 
 as comparatively imperfect, we should be cautious how 
 we make the conduct of those who lived under it our 
 example. But Milton held all parts — the book of Esther* 
 or the Chronicles, as much as that of Isaiah — to be the 
 immediate dictation of the Holy Spirit, and from this 
 principle he reasoned consequentially. He afterwards, 
 however, qualifies somewhat what he had said of impre- 
 cations, by classing among errors those " whereby we 
 invoke God or the devils to destroy any particular per- 
 son or thing, an intemperance to which even the pious 
 are occasionally liable. . . . Undeserved curses however 
 are of no force, and therefore not to be dreaded." 
 
 Prayer is assisted by fasting and vows. Easting is 
 either private or public, the latter being enjoined by the 
 Church or by the civil power for public reasons. '•' A re- 
 ligious fast is that whereby a man abstains not so much 
 from eating and drinking, as from sin, that he may be 
 able to devote himself more closely to prayer for the ob- 
 taining some good or deprecating some evil." 
 
 * We meet the following passage in his Doctrine of Divorce (ii. 15) : 
 " The same Spirit relates to us the course which the Medes and Per- 
 sians took by occasion of Vashti." 
 
ON RELIGION. 213 
 
 On the subject of oaths, his decisions are very rational 
 and judicious. He asserts their lawfulness, and that 
 they are to be kept, even contrary to o»7r interest; but 
 in the vexed question of whether an oath extorted by 
 a robber should be observed or not, he decides in the 
 negative, on the strongest grounds. The prohibition 
 (Matt. V. 33) "does not apply to serious subjects, but 
 to our daily conversation, in which nothing can occur 
 of such importance as to be worthy the attestation of 
 God." 
 
 Relying, as usual, chiefly on the Old Testament, he 
 sanctions the casting of lots as a means of learning the 
 will of God ; but it is not to be used in jest, or with a 
 superstitious or fraudulent purpose. 
 
 On the subject of the Sabbath, he reverts to what he 
 had already stated respecting the abrogation of the en- 
 tire Law, the Decalogue included. He shows that the 
 Sabbath was peculiar to the Israelites, and gives various 
 reasons for its institution. He then argues from Rom. 
 xiv. 5, that no particular day of worship had been ap- 
 pointed in its place, and replies to the arguments of 
 those who deduced the obligation to observe a particu- 
 lar day, from the Fourth Commandment, and* some other 
 places of Scripture. 
 
 Hence [he says] we arrive at the following conclusions : — first, 
 that under the Gospel no one day is appointed for divine worship 
 in preference to another, except such as the Church may set apart 
 of its own authority for the voluntary assembling of its members, 
 wherein, relinquishing all worldly affairs, we may dedicate our- 
 selves wholly to religious services, as far as is consistent with the 
 duties of charity ; and secondly, that this may conveniently take 
 place once every seven days, and particularly on the first day of 
 the week, provided always that it be observed in compliance with 
 the authority of the Church, and not in obedience to the edicts 
 
214 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 of the magistrate ; and likewise that a snare be not laid for the 
 conscience by the allegation of a divine commandment, borrowed 
 from the Decalogue ; an error against which Paul diligently 
 cautions us, Col. ii. 16 : " Let no man therefore judge you," etc. 
 For if we, under the Grospel, are to regulate the time of our 
 public worship by the prescriptions of the Decalogue, it will surely 
 be far safer to observe the seventh day, according to the express 
 commandment of God, than on the authority of mere himian con- 
 jecture, to adopt the first. I perceive, also, that several of the 
 best divines, as Bucer, Calvin, Peter Martyr, Musculus, Ursinus, 
 Gomarus, and others, concur in the opinions above expressed.* 
 
 To this it may be added, that such also is the opinion 
 of Paley and many other distinguished men in the Church 
 of England. All however seem to be agreed that, both 
 in a social and in a religious view, the devoting of one 
 day in seven to a cessation from worldly toil is a most 
 excellent institution, and one which should never be let 
 go out of use on any account whatever. 
 
 * He might have included Luther, who said, " As for the Sabbath, 
 or Sunday, there is no necessity for its observance ; and if we do so, 
 the reason ought to be, not because Moses commanded it, but because 
 human nature Ukewise teaches us to give ourselves, from time to time, 
 a day's rest, in order that man and beast may recruit their strength, 
 and that we may go and hear the word of God preached." 
 
215 
 
 ON INSPIRATION. 
 
 Milton, as we may see from various passages of his 
 Christian Doctrine and other writings, held that the 
 Holy Spirit aided sincere inquirers after the truth, how- 
 ever unfurnished with human aids to understand the 
 Scriptures, which, in his view, were not to be understood 
 without this aid : 
 
 " Those written records pure, 
 Though not but by the Spirit understood." 
 
 JBar. Lost J xii. 513. 
 
 But he went still further, and he seems to have believed 
 that the aid of the Spirit was also given to those who 
 sought, especially by writings, to promote the glory of 
 God. Thus, in his Reason of Church Government, he 
 says of himself, " And if any man incline to think I un- 
 dertake a task too difficult for my years, I trust, through 
 the 'Supreme enlightening assistance, far otherwise." Again, 
 " For public preaching indeed is the gift of the Spirit, 
 working as best seems to his secret will." When, in the 
 same piece, he hints at his design of writing a great poem, 
 he says, that the requisite powers were to be obtained 
 only " by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can 
 enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out 
 his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch 
 and piu-ify the lips of whom he pleases." 
 
216 OPINIONS OP MILTON. 
 
 ^ Milton's invocation of the Holy Spirit in the com- 
 mencement of Paradise Lost is not therefore to be re- 
 garded as a mere form of words. He believed that the 
 Divine Spirit would illuminate the mind of one whose 
 object was to 
 
 " Assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of Grod to men." 
 
 In addressing the Divine Light, which he seems to 
 have held to be the same as, or equivalent to, the Spirit, 
 he says — 
 
 " So much the rather Thou, celestial Light, 
 Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
 Irradiate ; there plant eyes, all mist from thence 
 Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight." — iii. 51. 
 
 And still stronger in the invocation of the Spirit in Pa- 
 radise Regained, where he says — 
 
 " Inspire, 
 As thou art wont, xnj 'prompted song, else mute." 
 
 It is therefore not an improbable supposition that Mil- 
 ton regarded his descriptions of Heaven and Hell, and 
 other " things invisible to mortal sight," as having their 
 foundations in reality, being the secret dictation of the 
 Holy Spirit to his unconscious mind. 
 
 Newton tells us that Milton's widow, being asked 
 whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she un- 
 derstood it as an imputation on him for stealing from 
 those authors, and answered with eagerness, that " he 
 stole from nobody but the Muse who inspired him." And 
 being asked by a lady present, who the Muse was, re- 
 plied, "It was God's grace and the Holy Spirit that 
 visited him nightly." 
 
217 
 
 ON PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 In astronomy it is, we think, quite clear that Milton, 
 like almost every scholar of his time,* held fast to what 
 is called the Ptolemaic system, which regarded the earth 
 as the centre of the universe. Thus in the Areopagitica 
 we meet the following passage : " Who can discern those 
 planets that are often combust, and those stars of bright- 
 est magnitude that rise and set with the sun, until the 
 opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a place 
 in the firmament where they may be seen evening or 
 morning?" We also meet, in the Reason of Church 
 Government, with the following : — " But that our happi- 
 ness may orb itself into a thousand vagaries of glory and 
 dehglit, and with a kind of eccentrical equation be, as it 
 were, an invariable planet of joy and felicity." In the 
 following passage, from the Christian Doctrine, we think 
 also that Ptolemaic ideas may be discerned : — " But even 
 if it filled with its presence the whole circle of the earth 
 
 * " In the middle of the seventeenth century, and long after, there 
 were mathematicians of no small reputation, who struggled staunchly 
 for the immobility of the earth ; and except so far as Cartesian theories 
 might have come in vogue, we have no reason to believe that any per- 
 sons unacquainted with astronomy, either in this country or on the Con- 
 tinent, had embraced the system of Copernicus. Hume has censured 
 Bacon for rejecting it ; but if Bacon had not done so, he would have an- 
 ticipated the rest of his countrymen by a fidl quarter of a century." — 
 Sallam, Lit. of Eurojje, iii. 192. 
 
218 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 with all the heavens, i. e. the entire fabrick of the toorld, it 
 would not follow that the Spirit is omnipresent." fur- 
 ther, though in one place of Paradise Lost (viii. 122 seq.) 
 he notices the Copernican system, and hints the possi- 
 bility of its truth, yet this was only in accordance with a 
 practice of his, of which we shall speak when we come 
 to treat of that poem ; and the system which is employed 
 as the true one all through it is the Ptolemaic. Fi- 
 nally, the book on astronomy which Milton read with 
 his pupils was Sacro Bosco, De Sphsera, with the Com- 
 mentary of the Jesuit Clavius, in which, as we will show, 
 is to be found every idea and every expression on the 
 subject which occurs in that poem. In truth, with Mil- 
 ton's thraldom to the letter of Scripture, he could not 
 hold any other system. He probably would have said, 
 with Luther, of Copernicus, " This silly fellow wants to 
 upset the old established astronomy; but according to 
 Scripture, Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and 
 not the earth." Still we are not to think the less of 
 Milton from not being in advance of most men of ge- 
 nius of his time. Bacon rejected the Copernican system, 
 and Sir Thomas Brown spoke of it with contempt. It 
 is however rather remarkable that Sir Wilham Davenant 
 has adopted it in his poem of Gondibert ; its first intro- 
 duction, we believe, into the realm of the Muses : — 
 
 " Man's pride, grown to religion, he abates 
 
 By moving our loved eartli, which we think fix'd, 
 Think all to it and it to none relates, 
 
 "With others' motions scorn to have it mix'd ; 
 As if it were great and stately to stand still 
 
 "Whilst other orbs dance on, or else think all 
 Those vast bright globes, to show Grod's needless skill. 
 
 Were made but to attend our little ball." — ii. 5, 19. 
 
 In astrology also Milton seems to have shared the 
 
ON PHILOSOPHY. 219 
 
 weakness of those two celebrated men. The only pas- 
 sage however that we have found in his prose works 
 looking that way, is the following in the treatise on Di- 
 vorce : — " But what might be the cause, whether each 
 one's allotted genius or proper star, or whether the su- 
 pernal influence of schemes and angular aspects, or this 
 elemental crasis here below, — whether all these, jointly or 
 singly, meeting friendly or unfriendly in either party, I 
 dare not, with the men I am likely to clash, appear so 
 much a philosopher as to conjecture." In Paradise Lost 
 
 we meet — 
 
 " All heaven 
 And Happy constellations on that hour 
 Shed their selectest influence." — viii. 511. 
 
 And— 
 
 " To the blank moon 
 Her office they prescribed ; to the other five 
 Their planetary motions and aspects, 
 In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite, 
 Of noxious efficacy, and when to join 
 In synod unbenign ; and taught the fix'd 
 Their influence malignant when to shower, 
 Which of them rising with the sun, or falling, 
 Should prove tempestuous." — x. 656. 
 
 In Paradise Regained, Satan says to our Lord, — 
 
 Now contrary, if I read aught in heaven, 
 
 Or heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars 
 
 Voluminous, or single characters, 
 
 In their conjunctions met, give me to spell, 
 
 Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate 
 
 Attend thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries. 
 
 Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death. 
 
 A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom, 
 
 Real or allegoric, I discern not, 
 
 Nor when ; eternal sure, as without end, 
 
 Without beginning ; for no date preflx'd 
 
 Directs me, in the starry rubric set. — iv. 379. 
 
220 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 The treatise which he wrote on the subject proves 
 Milton's acquaintance with logic ; and the books which 
 he read with his pupils, such as Pitiscus' Trigonometry, 
 show that he had made considerable progress in mathe- 
 matics. For geography he seems to have had a peculiar 
 predilection. In short, he does not seem to have been 
 ignorant of any of the sciences known at the time. He 
 was probably also well versed in the intricacies of meta- 
 physics. From what we have seen of his views in the 
 Christian Doctrine, and from one remarkable place in 
 Paradise Lost (v. 404 seq.), it seems quite clear that he 
 held the opinion designated by the dreaded name of 
 materialism. But this need inspire no alarm ; the whole 
 is a question of words only. We know not what matter 
 is, we know not what spirit is ; we in fact only know our 
 own sensations and ideas; and we believe it would be 
 no difficult matter to show that Bishop Berkeley and 
 the Hindu professors of the Vedanta philosophy differ in 
 words only from the grossest materialist, their ideas be- 
 ing of necessity identical. 
 
221 
 
 ON TOLERATION. 
 
 In the year 1673, the year before that of his death, Mil- 
 ton pubhshed a treatise on True Rehgion, Heresy, Schism, 
 Toleration, and what best Means may be used against 
 the Growth of Popery. 
 
 Heresy he here defines to be '' a religion taken up and 
 believed from the traditions of men, and additions to 
 the Word of God." Hence it follows that Popery is 
 the only or the greatest heresy in Christendom. The 
 term Roman Catholic is, he says, " a mere contradiction, 
 one of the Pope's bulls, as if he should say, universal 
 particular, or catholic schismatic." He refuses to apply 
 the term heresy to any portion of the Protestant church, 
 though it may have fallen into schism, i. e. division, and 
 therefore consist of sects. 
 
 Schism is a rent or division in the Church when it comes to the 
 separating of congregations; and may also happen to a true 
 church as well as to a false ; yet, in the true, needs not tend to the 
 breaking of communion, if they can agree in the right administra- 
 tion of that wherein they communicate, keeping their other opi- 
 nions to themselves, not being destructive to faith. The Phari- 
 sees and Sadducees were two sects, yet both met together in their 
 common worship of Grod at Jerusalem. But here the Papist will 
 angrily demand, "What! are Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, 
 Socinians, no heretics ? I answer, all these may have some errors, 
 but are no heretics. Heresy is in the will and choice professedly 
 against Scripture ; error is against the will in misunderstanding 
 
222 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 the Scripture, after all sincere endeavours to understand it rightly : 
 hence it was said well by one of the ancients, " Err I may, but a 
 heretic I will not be." It is a human frailty to err, and no man 
 is infallible here on earth. But so long as all these profess to set 
 the "Word of God only before them as the rule of faith and obe- 
 dience, and use aU diligence and sincerity of heart, by reading, 
 by learning, by study, by prayer, for illumination of the Holy Spi- 
 rit, to understand the rule and obey it, — they have done what man 
 can do ; God will assuredly pardon them, as he did the friends of 
 Job, good and pious men, though much mistaken, as there it ap- 
 pears, in some points of doctrine. 
 
 But some will say. With Christians it is otherwise,, whom God 
 hath promised by his Spirit to teach all things. True, all things 
 necessary to salvation. But the hottest disputes among Protes- 
 tants, calmly and charitably inquired into, will be found less than 
 such. The Lutheran holds consubstantiation,* an error indeed, 
 but not mortal. The Calvinist is taxed with predestination, and to 
 make God the author of sin, not with any dishonourable thought 
 of God, but it may be over-zealously asserting his absolute power, 
 not without plea of Scripture. The Anabaptist is accused of de- 
 nying infants their right to baptism ; again, they say they deny 
 nothing but what Scripture denies them. The Arian and Socinian 
 are charged to dispute against the Trinity ; they affirm to believe 
 the Pather, Son, and Holy Ghost, according to Scripture and the 
 Apostolic Creed. As for terms of trinity, triniunity, co-essenti- 
 ality, tripersonality, and the like, they reject them as scholastic 
 notions, not to be found in Scripture, which, by a general Protes- 
 tant maxim, is plain and perspicuous abundantly to explain its 
 own meaning in the properest words belonging to so high a mat- 
 ter and so necessary to be known ; a mystery indeed in their so- 
 phistic subtleties, but in Scripture a plain doctrine. Their other 
 opinions are of less moment. They dispute the satisfaction of 
 Christ, or rather the word satisfaction, as not Scriptural, but they 
 acknowledge him both God and their Saviour. The Arminian, 
 lastly, is condemned for setting up free-will against free-grace, but 
 
 * As Milton was probably aware that consubstantiation and transub- 
 stantiation only differ in the first syllable, and in reality signify the 
 same, we may perhaps infer that he would have tolerated the latter if 
 it had been, like the former, a mere dogma, and not connected with 
 idolatrous worship. 
 
ON TOLERATION. 223 
 
 that imputation he disclaims in all his writings, and grounds him- 
 self largely upon Scripture only. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the authors or late revivers of all these 
 sects or opinions were learned, worthy, zealous, and religious men, 
 as appears by their lives written ; and the same of their many 
 eminent and learned followers, perfect and powerful in the Scrip- 
 tures, holy and unblamable in their lives. And it cannot be 
 imagined that God would desert such painful and zealous la- 
 bourers in his Church, and oftentimes great sufferers for their con- 
 science, to damnable errors and a reprobate sense, who had so of- 
 ten implored the assistance of his Spirit ; but rather, having made 
 no man infallible, that he hath pardoned their errors, and accepts 
 their pious endeavours, sincerely searching all things, according -to 
 the rule of Scripture, with such direction and guidance as they can 
 obtain of God by prayer. What Protestant then, who himself 
 maintains the same principles and disavows all implicit faith, 
 would persecute, and not rather charitably tolerate, such men as 
 these, unless he mean to abjure the principles of his own religion ? 
 If it be asked how far they should be tolerated, I answer. Doubt- 
 less equally, as being all Protestants, — that is, on all occasions to 
 give an account of their faith, either by arguing, preaching in their 
 several assemblies, public writing, and the freedom of printing. 
 For if the French and Polonian Protestants enjoy all this liberty 
 among Papists, much more may a Protestant justly expect it among 
 Protestants ; and yet sometimes here among us the one perse- 
 cutes the other upon every slight pretence. 
 
 As to the heresy of Popery, considering it as a union 
 of political and ecclesiastical usurpation, he " submits it 
 to the consideration of all magistrates, who are best able 
 to provide for their own and the public safety," whether 
 it should be tolerated or not, hinting his own opinion 
 that it should not. But viewing it solely in a religious 
 light, as a system of idolatry, he is decided that it should 
 not be tolerated, either publicly or privately. He argues 
 as usual from the Old Testament, and relies on the Se- 
 cond Commandment, though, as we have seen, he held 
 
224 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 the Decalogue to have been abolished along with the rest 
 of the Law. 
 
 Some years ago such an opinion as this would have 
 been received with scorn or incredulity; but we have 
 lived to see Popery display herself in her true form as 
 the unrelenting foe of truth and liberty. It is however 
 not on account of her idolatry (which is comparatively a 
 venial offence) that Popery is to be abhorred and dreaded, 
 but for her cruel, persecuting spirit. If we look through 
 all the religions of ancient and modern Asia and Europe, 
 Zoroasterism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, 
 etc., we nowhere find any system so sanguinary as that 
 of the Church of Rome ; even the political persecutions 
 of the Roman emperors were trifling in comparison with 
 hers; and her spirit is unchanged and unchangeable, 
 — ^her clergy are as wilHng to employ persecution now 
 as in the days of St. Dominic. But her impotence is 
 our security; the spirit of the age is against her, and 
 she struggles, and ever will struggle, in vain, to recover 
 her former power. The educated classes are everywhere 
 opposed to her pretensions, and therefore she may with 
 safety be tolerated. She will also always have votaries 
 and make proselytes, for weak, trifling minds will be 
 caught with her gaudy, theatric ceremonies ; the feeble 
 worshipers of antiquity and authority will submit to her 
 pretensions ; and, as Milton observes, — 
 
 There is no man so wicked but at times his conscience will 
 wring him with thoughts of another world, and the peril of his 
 soul. The trouble and melancholy which he conceives of true 
 repentance and amendment he endures not, but inclines rather 
 to some carnal superstition, which may pacify and lull his con- 
 science with some more pleasing doctrine. None more ready and 
 officious to oifer herself than the E-omish, and opens wide her 
 
ON TOLERATION. 225 
 
 office with all her facilities to receive him : easy confession, easy 
 absolution, pardons, indulgences, masses for him both quick and 
 dead, Agnus Deis, and the like. And he, instead of " working 
 out his salvation with fear and trembling," straight thinks in his 
 heart — like another kind of fool than he in the Psalms— to bribe 
 God as a corrupt judge, and by his proctor, some priest or friar, 
 to buy out his peace with money, which he cannot with his 
 repentance. 
 
226 '< 
 
 ^ 
 
 ON GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In politics, Milton was a sincere republican, but his 
 ideal of a republic was far more of an aristocratic than 
 a democratic form.* To monarchy in itself he had no 
 violent objection, and had he. seen it as it has appeared 
 in this country since the Revolution, he w^ould probably 
 have acquiesced in it with cheerfulness. But when he 
 looked back on the courts and governments of the two 
 first Stuarts, and turned his view on the actual court 
 of France, he could anticipate nothing but evil from a 
 return to that form of government, and he could dis- 
 cern in Europe no better model than that of the United 
 Provinces, which, with modifications, he recommended 
 to the people of England, in his treatise on " The ready 
 and easy Way to establish a Eree Commonwealth, and the 
 
 * Milton, we may be sure, would ascribe to our Lord no sentiments 
 but what be regarded as true and just. He makes him express himself 
 as follows in Paradise E-egained : — 
 
 " And what the people but a herd confused, 
 
 A miscellaneous rabble, who extol 
 
 Things vulgar and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the praise ? 
 
 They praise and they admire they know not what, 
 
 And know not whom, but as one leads the other. 
 
 And what delight to be by such extoU'd, 
 
 To live upon their tongues and be their talk ! 
 
 Of whom to be dispraised is no small praise, — 
 
 His lot who dare be singularly good." — iii. 49. 
 
ON GOVERNMENT. 227 
 
 excellence thereof," which he published on the eve of the 
 Restoration. 
 
 In this treatise he sums up, and not without some- 
 what of the spirit of a prophet, the ill results of a 
 return to the ancient line of princes. Having noticed 
 Christ's rebuke of the ambition of the sons of Zebedee, 
 and asserting that it was of civil government only that 
 he spoke, he proceeds as follows : — 
 
 And what government comes nearer to this precept of Christ 
 than a free commonwealth ? wherein they who are the greatest 
 are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own 
 cost and charges ; neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated 
 above their brethren ; live soberly in their families, walk the 
 streets as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, 
 without adoration. Whereas a king must be adored like a demi- 
 god, with a dissolute and haughty court about him, of vast ex- 
 pense and luxury ; masks and revels, to the debauching of our 
 prime gentry, both male and female, not in their pastimes only, 
 but in earnest, by the loose employments of court-service, which 
 will be then thought honourable. There will be a queen of no 
 less charge — in most likelihood outlandish and a Papist — besides 
 a queen-mother already, together with both their courts and 
 numerous train : then a royal issue, and erelong severally their 
 sumptuous courts ; to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of 
 servants only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to the 
 hopes, not of public but of court-offices, to be stewards, chamber- 
 lains, ushers, grooms even of the close-stool : and the lower their 
 minds, debased with court-opinions contrary to all virtue and re- 
 formation, the haughtier will be their pride and profuseness. We 
 may well remember this not long since at home, nor need but 
 look at present into the French court, where enticements and 
 preferments daily draw away and pervert the Protestant nobility. 
 
 As to the burden of expense, to our cost we shall soon know 
 it, for any good to us deserving to be termed no better than the 
 vast and lavish price of our subjection and their debauchery, 
 which we are now so greedily cheapening, and would so fain be 
 paying most inconsiderately to a single person, who, for anythiug 
 wherein the public really needs him, will have little else to do but 
 
 q2 
 
228 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 to bestow tlie eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a 
 pompous lace upon tlie superficial actings of state, to pageant 
 himself up and down in progress* among the perpetual bowings 
 and cringings of an abject people, on either side deifying and 
 adoring him for nothing done that can deserve it. 
 
 Instead of placing power thus in the hands of a single 
 person, for which, he says — not perhaps without an eye 
 to Cromwell — men have smarted so oft, Milton would 
 have it deposited in those of "a general council of ablest 
 men, chosen by the people, to consult of public affairs 
 from time to time for the common good." 
 
 In this grand council must the sovereignty, not transferred, 
 but delegated only, and, as it were, deposited, reside ; with this 
 caution, they must have the forces by sea and land committed 
 to them, for preservation of the common peace and liberty ; 
 must raise and manage the public revenue, at least with some 
 inspectors, deputed for satisfaction of the people how it is em- 
 ployed; must make or propose civil laws, treat of commerce, 
 peace, or war, with foreign nations, and — for the carrying on some 
 particular affairs with more secresy and expedition — must elect 
 (as they have alreadyf), out of their own number and others, a 
 council of state. 
 
 It seems rather extraordinary that, after the ex- 
 perience of the Long Parhament, Milton should pro- 
 pose this council to be perpetual. But he proceeds 
 thus : — 
 
 And although it may seem strange at first hearing — by reason 
 that men's minds are prepossessed with the notion of successive 
 parliaments — I affirm that the grand or general council, being 
 
 * These royal progresses, or rounds of visits to the houses of the 
 nobility, had prevailed chiefly in the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 t Sc. elected. This omission of the participle was not unusual with 
 our old writers, and, in our opinion, it is not to be disapproved of. 
 *' But I have, and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only 
 proper to himself," says Ben Jonson of Bacon. 
 "More than my own ; that am, have, and will be." — Hen. VIII. iii. 2. 
 
ON GOVERNMENT. 229 
 
 well chosen, should be perpetual ; for so their business is or may 
 be and ofttimes urgent, the opportunity of affairs gained or lost 
 in a moment. The day of council cannot be set, as the day of 
 a festival, but must be ready always to prevent* or answer all 
 occasions. By this continuance they will become every way skil- 
 fuUest, best provided of intelligence from abroad, best acquainted 
 vdth the people at home and the people with them. The ship of 
 the commonwealth is always under sail ; they sit at the stem, and 
 if they steer well, what need is there to change them, it being 
 rather dangerous ? Add to this, that the grand council is both 
 foundation and main pillar of the whole State ; and to move pillars 
 and foundations, not faulty, cannot be safe for the building. 
 
 I see not, therefore, how we can be advantaged by successive 
 and transitory parliaments ; but that they are much likelier con- 
 tinually to unsettle rather than to settle a free government, to breed 
 commotions, changes, novelties, and uncertainties ; to bring neg- 
 lect upon present affairs and opportunities, while all minds are in 
 suspense with expectation of a new assembly, and the assembly, 
 for a good space, taken up with the new settling of itself. After 
 which, if they find no great work to do, they will make it, by 
 altering or repealing former acts, or making and midtiplying new, 
 that they may seem to see what their predecessors saw not, and 
 not to have assembled for nothing, till all law be lost in the mul- 
 titude of clashing statutes. But if the ambition of such as think 
 themselves injured that they also partake not of the government, 
 and are impatient till they be chosen, cannot brook the perpe- 
 tuity of others chosen before them, or if it be feared that long 
 continuance of power may corrupt sincerest men, the known 
 expedient is, and by some lately propounded, that annually — or if 
 the space be longer, so much perhaps the better — the third part 
 of senators may go out according to the precedence of their 
 election, and the like number be chosen in their places, to pre- 
 vent their settling of too absolute a power, if it should be per- 
 petual; and this they csill partial rotation. 
 
 His chief objection to this plan is, that in this way 
 the best and ablest men might have to retire, and be 
 replaced by those who were raw and inexperienced, or 
 
 * I. e. Anticipate, a usual sense of prevent at that time. 
 
230 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 ill-affected. He does not seem ever to have thought 
 of obviating this inconvenience, by making the retiring 
 senators capable of re-election. As to the counciFs 
 " settling of too absolute a power," he thinks there is 
 little danger of it while the people have arms in their 
 hands. He is entirely opposed to a popular assembly 
 in conjunction with the grand council, showing from 
 history its inadequacy for the conservation of liberty. 
 Neither would he have the members of the council 
 chosen immediately by the popular vote. " Another 
 way," he says, " will be to well qualify and refine elec- 
 tions : not committing all to the noise and shouting of 
 a rude multitude, but permitting only those of them who 
 are- rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will ; 
 and out of that number, others of a better breeding 
 to choose a less number more judiciously; till, after a 
 third or fourth sifting and refining of exactest choice, 
 they only be left chosen who are the due number, and 
 seem by most voices the worthiest." 
 
 But the grand council should not be the sole de- 
 pository of political power. Having spoken of liberty 
 of conscience, which should be unlimited, he adds : — 
 
 The other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights and 
 advancements of every person according to his merit : the enjoy- 
 ment of those never more certain, and the access to them never 
 more open, than in a free commonwealth. Both which, in my 
 opinion, may be best and soonest obtained if every county in 
 the land were made a kind of subordinate commonalty or com- 
 monwealth, and one chief town or more, according as the shire is 
 in circuit, made cities, if they be not called so already, where the 
 nobility and chief gentry, from a proportionable compass annexed 
 to each city, may build houses or palaces befitting their quality, 
 may bear part in the government, make their own judicial law s, 
 or use those that are, and execute them by their own elected 
 judicatures and judges, without appeal, in all things of civil 
 
ON GOVERNMENT, 231 
 
 government between man and man. So they shall have justice 
 "in their own hands, law executed fully and finally in their own 
 counties and precincts — long wished and spoken of, but never 
 yet obtained. They shall have none then to blame but them- 
 selves if it be not well administered, and fewer laws to expect 
 from the supreme authority ; or to those that shall be made, of 
 any great concernment to public liberty, they may without much 
 trouble — in these commonalties, or in more general assemblies, 
 called to their cities from the whole territory on such occasion — 
 declare and publish their assent or dissent by deputies, within a 
 time limited, sent to the grand council ; yet so as this their judge- 
 ment declared shall submit to the greater number of other coun- 
 ties or commonalties, and not avail them to any exemption of 
 themselves, or refusal of agreement with the rest, as it may in 
 any of the United Provinces, being sovereign within itself, to the 
 great disadvantage of that Union. 
 
 Controversies between men of different counties might 
 be decided at the capital city, or any more commodious 
 place, by indifferent judges. 
 
 In these cities they should also have •' schools and 
 academies at their own choice, wherein their children 
 may be bred up in their own sight to all learning and 
 noble education — not in grammar only, but in all liberal 
 acts and exercises." But this, he says, 
 
 Monarchs never will permit ; whose aim is to make the people 
 wealthy indeed perhaps and well-fleeced, for their own shearing 
 and the supply of regal prodigality ; but otherwise softest, basest, 
 viciousest, servilest, easiest to be kept under ; and, not only in 
 fleece, but in mind also, sheepishest. And will have all the 
 benches of judicature annexed to the throne as a gift of royal 
 grace, that we have justice done us ; whereas nothing can be 
 more essential to the freedom of a people than to have the 
 administration of justice, and all public ornaments, in their own 
 election, and within their own bounds, without long travelling or 
 depending upon remote places to obtain their right or any civil 
 accomplishment, so it be not supreme, but subordinate to the 
 general power and union of the whole republic. 
 
232 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 Such were the views of Milton as to the best form of 
 government for England, formed in total ignorance of 
 the character of the English people, the most attached 
 to ancient usages and precedents, and the least inclined 
 to depart from them, of any people in Europe. We need 
 hardly say, then, that his plan was impracticable under 
 any circumstances. 
 
233 
 
 ON EDUCATION. 
 
 Ln his celebrated treatise addressed to his friend HartHb, 
 Milton gives his ideas on the best mode of education for 
 the "noble and gentle youth" of England, between the 
 ages of twelve and twenty-one years. 
 
 He proposes that a house and grounds should be 
 selected capable of lodging commodiously a hundred 
 and fifty persons ; to be both school and university. Of 
 these about twenty should be attendants, the remainder 
 teachers and students ; the whole to be under the direc- 
 tion of one " of desert sufficient and ability either to do 
 all, or wisely to direct and oversee it done." 
 
 With respect to their studies, they should first be 
 taught the chief and necessary rules of the Latin gram- 
 mar, which language they should be made to pronounce 
 as near the Italian manner as possible, especially in the 
 vowels ; " for we Englishmen," he says, " being far 
 northerly, do not open our mouths in the cold air wide 
 enough to grace a southern tongue, but are observed 
 by all other nations to speak exceeding close and in- 
 ward ; so that to smatter Latin with an English mouth 
 is as ill a hearing as law French." He would then have 
 read to them some "easy and delightful book of educa- 
 tion;" but though there is plenty of such in Greek, he 
 can point out nothing of the kind in Latin, except the 
 first books of Quintilian. 
 
234 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper 
 them such lectures and explanations upon every opportunity as 
 may lead and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with the 
 study of learning and the admiration of virtue, stirred up with 
 high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear 
 to God, and famous to all ages ; that they may despise and scorn 
 all their childish and ill-taught qualities, to delight in manly and 
 liberal exercises, which he who hath the art and proper eloquence 
 to catch* them with — what with mild and effectual persuasions, 
 and what with the intimation of some fear, if need be, but chiefly 
 by his own example — might, in a short space, gain them to an in- 
 credible diligence and courage, infusing into their young breasts 
 such an ingenuous and noble ardour as would not fail to make 
 many of them renowned and matchless men. 
 
 During this period they might be taught arithmetic 
 and the elements of geometry, " even playing." Between 
 supper and bed-time they might be instructed in the easy 
 grounds of religion and the Scripture history. 
 
 They are then to be put to read the agricultural 
 writers, Cato, Varro, Columella; for even if the lan- 
 guage be difficult, it is not a difficulty above their years. 
 Hence, he infers, they will learn how to cultivate and 
 improve the soil of their country. Before they are half 
 through these authors, he thinks they must be masters 
 
 * /. e. Imbue, affect, or infect. We still use it, but in rather a"passive 
 sense, as when we say, " he had caught a fever." Catch is, we think, 
 a corruption of latch, from A. S. gelceccan, perf. gelmhte, whence caught, 
 while if it came from capio, it would be catched. In Macbeth (iv. 3) we 
 meet with latch in the sense of catch, and we have the latch of a door, 
 the latchet of a shoe. We would therefore read latched for lapsed, in 
 
 "For which if I be lapsed in this place." — Twelfth Night, iii. 3 ; 
 and in — 
 
 " But hast thou yet latched the Athenian's eyes 
 With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do ?" 
 
 Mid. Night's Dream, iii. 2. 
 We would understand latch as catch in this place of Milton. We 
 may observe that take is used in a somewhat similar manner. " No 
 fairy takes " " a fruit that with the frost is taken." — Surrey. 
 
ON EDUCATION. 235 
 
 of any ordinary Latin prose. They may now also learn 
 the use of the globes in some modern author, and all 
 the maps, " first with the old names and then with the 
 new/' or they might be able to read some compendious 
 method of natural philosophy. They might at this time 
 also commence Greek, in the same manner as the Latin, 
 first reading the historical physiology of Aristotle and 
 Theophrastus. To these they can add Vitruvius, Sene- 
 ca's Natural Questions, Mela, Celsus, Pliny, or Solinus, 
 and then " they may descend in mathematics to the in- 
 strumental science of trigonometry, and from thence to 
 fortification, architecture, enginery, or navigation ; and in 
 natural philosophy, they may proceed leisurely from the 
 history of meteors, minerals, plants, and living creatm^es, 
 as far as anatomy." 
 
 Then also might be read to them, " out of some not 
 tedious writer," the institutions of physic ; as this may 
 be of use to a man's self and to his friends, and even 
 enable him, at times, to save an army from wasting away 
 by disease. In these various studies, they may obtain, — • 
 some for pay, some for favour, — the aid and instruction 
 of hunters, shepherds, gardeners, architects, mariners, 
 anatomists, etc. " Then also those poets which are now 
 counted most hard will be both facile and pleasant, — Or- 
 pheus, Hesiod, Theocritus, Aratus, Nicander, Oppian, 
 Dionysius; and in Latin, Lucretius, Manilius, and the 
 rural parts of Virgil." 
 
 They may now commence the study of ethics, reading 
 for that purpose the moral works of Plato, Xenophon, 
 Cicero, Plutarch, Laertius, etc.; but always closing the 
 day's work '' under the determinate sentence of David or 
 Solomon, or the Evangelists and Apostolic Scriptures." 
 At odd hours, during this or the preceding period, they 
 
236 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 may Kave acquired the Italian tongue. " And soon after, 
 but with wariness and good antidote, it would be whole- 
 some enough to let them taste some choice comedies, — 
 Greek, Latin, or Italian ; those tragedies also that treat 
 of household matters, as Trachinise, Alcestis, and the 
 like." 
 
 He would next have them instructed in politics, "that 
 they may not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, 
 be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a totter- 
 ing conscience, as many of our great counsellors have 
 lately shown themselves, but steadfast pillars of the State. 
 Then they should study the grounds of law and legal 
 justice in the law of Moses, the remains of the Greek 
 lawgivers, that of the Romans down to Justinian, and so 
 down to the Saxon and Common Law of England and 
 the Statutes." 
 
 The Sundays now, and the evenings, may be devoted 
 to the highest matters of theology and Church history, 
 and by this time they may have acquired the Hebrew 
 tongue; "whereto," he says, "it would be no impossi- 
 bility to add the Chaldee and the Syrian dialect." 
 
 "When all these employments are well conquered, then will the 
 choice historians, heroic poems, and Attic tragedies of stateliest 
 and most regal argument, with all the famous political orations, 
 offer themselves ; which if they were not merely read, but some of 
 them got by memory and solemnly pronounced with right accent 
 and grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with the spi- 
 rit and vigour of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides or Sophocles. 
 
 The time is now come for teaching them logic and 
 rhetoric, and the art of criticism, as developed in the 
 works of Aristotle and Horace, and by Castelvetro, Tasso, 
 Mazzoni, and others, among the Italians, which " teaches 
 what the laws are of a true epic poem ; what of a dra- 
 
ON EDUCATION. 237 
 
 matic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the 
 grand masterpiece to observe . . . and show them what 
 rehgious, what glorious and magnificent use might be 
 made of poetry, both in Divine and human things." 
 
 From hence, and not till now, will be the right season of form- 
 ing them to be able writers and composers in every excellent 
 matter, when they shall be thus fraught with a universal insight 
 into things ; or whether they be to speak in parliament or coun- 
 cil, honour and attention would be waiting on their lips. There 
 would then also appear in pulpits other visages, other gestures, 
 and stuif otherwise wrought than what we now sit under ; ofttimes 
 to as great a trial of our patience, as any other that they preach 
 to us. These are the studies wherein our noble and our gentle 
 youth ought to bestow their time in a disciplinary way from twelve 
 to one-and-twenty ; unless they rely more upon their ancestors, 
 dead, than upon themselves, living : in which methodical course, 
 it is so supposed, they must proceed by the steady pace of learn- 
 ing onward ; as at convenient times, for memory's sake, to retire 
 back into the middle ward, and sometimes into the rear, of what 
 they have been taught, until they have confirmed and solidly 
 united the whole body of their perfected knowledge, like the em- 
 battling of a Roman legion. 
 
 They should be allowed an hour and a half before 
 dinner, at noon, for exercise, and due rest after ; but the 
 time for this might be enlarged, as they rose earlier or 
 later in the morning, i.e. according to the time of the 
 year. 
 
 The exercise which I commend first, is the exact use of their 
 weapon, to guard and to strike safely with edge or point. This will 
 keep them healthy, nimble, strong, and well in health ; is also the 
 likeliest means to make them grow large and tall, and to inspire 
 them with a gallant and fearless courage, which, being tempered 
 with seasonable lectures and precepts to them of true fortitude 
 and patience, will turn into a native and heroic valour, and make 
 them hate the cowardice of doing wrong. They must be also 
 practised in all the locks and gripes of wrestling, — wherein Eng- 
 lishmen were wont to excel, — as need may often be in fight to tug, 
 
238 OPINIOT^S OV MILTON. 
 
 to grapple, and to close. And this perhaps will be enough, wherein 
 to heat and prove their single strength. 
 
 The interim of unsweating themselves regularly, and con- 
 venient rest before meat, may both with profit and delight be 
 taken up in recreating and composing their travailed spirits with 
 the solemn and divine harmonies of music heard or learned; 
 either whilst the skilful organist plies his grave and fancied des- 
 cant in lofty fugues,* or the whole symphony, with artful and 
 unimaginable touches, adorn and grace the well-studied chords of 
 some choice composer; sometimes the lute or soft organ-stop 
 waiting on elegant voices, either to religious, martial, or civil 
 ditties, which — if wise men and prophets be not extremely out — 
 have a great power over dispositions and manners, to smooth and 
 make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered pas- 
 sions. The like, also, would not be inexpedient after meat, to 
 assist and cherish nature in her first concoction, and send their 
 minds back to study in good tune and satisfaction ; where, having 
 followed it close under vigilant eyes till about two hours before 
 supper, they are by a sudden alarum or watchword to be called 
 out to their military motions, under sky or covert, according to 
 the season, as was the Boman wont : first on foot, then, as their 
 age permits, on horseback, to all the art of cavalry — that having 
 in sport, but with much exactness and daily muster, served out 
 the rudiments of their soldiership, in all the skill of embattling, 
 marching, encamping, fortifying, besieging, and battering, with 
 all the helps of ancient and modern stratagems, tactics, and war- 
 like maxims, they may, as it were out of a long war, come forth 
 renowned and perfect commanders in the service of their country. 
 They would not then, if they were trusted Avith fair and hopeful 
 armies, suifer them, for want of just and wise discipline, to shed 
 away from about them like sick feathers, though they be never so 
 oft supplied ; they would not suffer their empty and unrecruitable 
 colonels of twenty men in a company to quaff" out or convey into 
 secret hoards the wages of a delusive list and a miserable rem- 
 nant, yet in the meanwhile to be overmastered with a score or 
 two of drunkards, the only soldiery left about them, or else to 
 comply with all rapines and violences. No, certainly, if they 
 
 * Descant is what we term variation. " A fugue," says Hume (on 
 Par. Lost, xi. 563), "is in music the correspondence of parts answering 
 one another in the same notes, either above or below." 
 
ON EDUCATION. 239 
 
 know aught of that knowledge that belongs to good men, or good 
 governors, they would not suffer these things.* 
 
 But to return to our own institute. Besides these constant 
 exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining ex- 
 perience, to be won from pleasure itself abroad. In those vernal 
 seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant^ it were an 
 injury and a sullenness against nature not to go out and see her 
 riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. I 
 should not, therefore, be a persuader to them of studying much 
 then, after two years that they have well laid their grounds,t but 
 to ride out in companies, with prudent and staid guides, to all the 
 quarters of the land, learning and observing all places of strength, 
 all commodities of building and of soil for towns and tillage, har- 
 bours and ports for trade ; sometimes taking sea as far as to our 
 navy, to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge 
 of sailing and of sea-fight. 
 
 These ways would try all their pecular gifts of nature ; and if 
 there were any secret excellence among them would fetch it out, 
 and give it fair opportunities to advance itself by, which could 
 not but mightily redound to the good of this nation, and bring 
 into fashion again those old admired virtues ;j: and excellencies, 
 with far more advantage now in the purity of Christian know- 
 ledge. Nor shall we then need the Monsieurs of Paris to take 
 our hopeful youth into their slight and prodigal custodies, and 
 send them over back again transformed into mimics, apes, and 
 kickshaws. But if they desire to see other countries at three 
 or four and twenty years of age, not to learn principles, but to 
 enlarge experience and make wise observations, they will by that 
 time be such as shall deserve the regard and honour of all men 
 where they pass, and the society and friendship of those who are 
 best and most eminent, § And perhaps then other nations wiU be 
 glad to visit us for their breeding, or else to imitate us in their 
 own country. 
 
 We have always regarded this treatise of Milton's as 
 
 * In all this he aUudes to the troops of the Parhament, before the 
 New Model. 
 
 t J. e. Foundation. 
 
 \ I.e. Those of the Greeks and E/Omans. 
 
 § He here probably has his own case in view. 
 
240 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 a singular instance of how even the greatest of minds 
 will allow themselves to be beguiled by their imagina? 
 tion. There could not have been found at that time in 
 England, there could not be found even at the present 
 day, when it is so much more populous, even one hun- 
 dred persons capable of acquiring, between the ages 
 of twelve and twenty-one, anything approaching to the 
 quantity of various knowledge here supposed ; nay, 
 Milton himself never possessed it at any period of his 
 life. Surely his experience in teaching might have 
 shown him that what he proposed was little short of 
 impossibility, in the present condition of human nature, 
 a condition not likely ever to be essentially altered. A 
 limit is set to our acquisitions, and he who seeks to be 
 acquainted with too many things, will find himself in 
 the end having little real knowledge of any. Most for- 
 tunate, too, for the world, we may add, was it, that 
 Milton himself was, as he informs us, educated on a 
 different system, and his splendid imagination allowed 
 to attain its full development. 
 
 There are some things however in this system worthy 
 of attention and of adoption. Thus, as he would not 
 commence even with Latin grammar till after the age of 
 twelve, it is plain that he was no friend to the forcing 
 system, or that of trying to make infant prodigies -, but 
 still we think that classical education may with safety 
 begin at a much earlier age, as indeed he did begin it 
 himself in the case of his nephews. We quite approve 
 of his plan of teaching a more correct mode of pronoun- 
 cing Latin, but of that we shall speak when we come to 
 notice his own Latin writings. We also approve of his 
 deferring the practice of literary composition till the time 
 when the mind would have been well furnished with 
 
ON EDUCATION. 241 
 
 ideas. It would also appear from what he says on the 
 subject, that the compositions should be altogether or 
 chiefly in the vernacular language, — of the culture of 
 which however he nowhere speaks; but it is hard to 
 believe that at that time Latin composition, at least 
 in prose, should have been neglected. We much doubt 
 however if he would have included verse-making, — a prac- 
 tice which must be offensive to every true poet. Lastly, 
 he is to be commended for including science as well as 
 literature in his course of studies, — a matter too much 
 neglected at many of our schools. He makes, as we may 
 observe, the same mistake here as in his own teaching, 
 by commencing with the cultivation of the reason, ra- 
 ther than the imagination; but perhaps he may have 
 thought that before the age of twelve that faculty would 
 have been sufficiently developed by works in the mother 
 tongue. We cannot conclude without expressing our ap- 
 proval of the regard shown to religion in this system of 
 education. 
 
242 
 
 MILTON'S LEAMINa. 
 
 The present seems to be the most suitable place for 
 making some observations with respect to the extent of 
 this great poet's learning, concerning which opinions 
 seem to be somewhat vague and indefinite. 
 
 In Greek and Latin there was probably not a single 
 author that he had not read. He appears to have been 
 quite familiar with Plato while he was at Cambridge; 
 and from two places of Comus we may infer, that while 
 at Horton, if not before, he had read Athenaeus and 
 Tzetzes' comment on Lycophron.* We have also seenf his 
 own assertion, that he carried his studies of the writers 
 of these languages down into the Middle Ages. Beside 
 Homer, it is inferred — chiefly, we believe, from the cir- 
 cumstance of his copy, with his marginal annotations, 
 being in existence — that Euripides was his great fa- 
 vourite ; but this inference is not borne out by a perusal 
 of his writings, which would rather lead to the conclu- 
 sion that JEschylus and Sophocles stood higher in his 
 favour. In Latin there can be little doubt but that he 
 had a great partiality for Ovid, — and who with poetic 
 feeling has not? — for in his Prolusions he styles him, 
 
 * Comus, V. 95 seq. (see our Mythol. of Greece and Italy, p. 48, third 
 edit.) and v. 879 seq. (ibid. p. 240). Mr. Mitford says, that Lord Charle- 
 mont possessed Milton's Lycophron, with some of his critical remarks. 
 
 t Above, page 10. 
 
Milton's learning. 243 
 
 "poetarum elegantissimus ; " and his daughter Deborah 
 said that Ovid was, with Isaiah and Homer, the book 
 she and her sister were most frequently called on to read 
 to their father. 
 
 It is probable that Milton learned Hebrew in his boy- 
 hood ; we have seen* that he was familiar with it when 
 he went to Cambridge. He also, as we learn from Phil- 
 lips, acquired, we know not at what time, but most pro- 
 bably when he was studying with a view to taking orders, 
 the Rabbinical Hebrew and the Syriac ; but we have no 
 means of ascertaining how far his studies in the writings 
 of the Rabbin proceeded. We have not met with any 
 certain traces of such learning in his poems ; but the fol- 
 lowing passage in his Doctrine of Divorce (ii. 18) would 
 seem to indicate something more than a mere superficial 
 acquaintance with them. Speaking of the passage in 
 Judges, where the Levite's wife is said to have played 
 the w^hore against him, he adds, " which Josephus and 
 the Septuagint, with the Chaldean, interpret only of stub- 
 bornness and rebellion against her husband ; and to this 
 I add, that Kimchi, and the two other Rabbies, who 
 gloss the text, are in the same opinion." We feel sure 
 that he would never have expressed himself in this man- 
 ner if he were only relating at second-hand. 
 
 There can be no doubt but that Milton's knowledge 
 of the Italian writers was both extensive and accurate. 
 Mr. Mitford informs us, that he had seen a copy of the 
 Sonetti of Varchi, which had belonged to him, "in 
 
 * See above, p. 6. One of our most distinguislied "men of science 
 was tauglit Hebrew, actually in his childhood, by his uncle, who edu- 
 cated him. When we first knew him he was about nine years old, and 
 he could then read and translate the Hebrew Psalter wherever it was 
 opened. "We remember him at the same time learning fifty lines of the 
 Hias, with only the aid of a lexicon, in about half an hour. 
 
 R 2 
 
244 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 which/' he says, " the most curious expressions, and the 
 most poetical passages, were underhned and marked 
 with extraordinary care." Of his knowledge of French 
 and Spanish we are informed by others rather than by 
 himself, for he never makes any allusion to any writers 
 in these languages, except in his notice of The Verse 
 prefixed to Paradise Lost, where he says, " Some, both 
 Italian and Spanish poets, have rejected rime ;" in which, 
 as we will show hereafter, he probably alluded to Bos- 
 can and Jauragui, which writers of course he must have 
 read. It is, in our opinion, hardly possible that he was 
 not acquainted with Cervantes and with Rabelais, Marot, 
 and Montaigne. 
 
 As Milton in his History of England makes frequent 
 reference to the Saxon Chronicle, we may perhaps ven- 
 ture to infer that he had some knowledge of the Anglo- 
 Saxon language. He was also well read in the various 
 Latin Annals and Chronicles in which the events of Eng- 
 lish history had been registered. 
 
 We need hardly say that his acquaintance with the 
 writers in his own language was most extensive. In the 
 Apology for Smectymnuus, he alludes to the Vision and 
 Creed of Pierce Plowman, in a way which proves that 
 he must have read them. In the same piece he quotes a 
 passage, of some length, from old Gower, and he often 
 quotes or refers to Chaucer. His admiration for Shake- 
 speare is well known ; and Dry den says that " he ac- 
 knowledged to him that Spenser was his original," which 
 of course can only mean that this was the English poet 
 in whom he took most delight, and whom he studied 
 most ; for every man's style is his own, a part of his 
 being. It is rather strange that Cowley should be said 
 to have been one of his favourites ; but in literature, as 
 
Milton's learning. 245 
 
 in love, we often prefer our opposites. One of the most 
 money-loving men we ever knew, was devotedly fond — 
 of Horace ! 
 
 Milton, as is well known, has references . in both his 
 prose and poetry to books of chivalry, and he once me- 
 ditated a poem on the subject of Arthur. Hence his 
 biographers in general have taken occasion to assert that 
 he was deeply read in the old romances of the cycles of 
 Arthur and Charlemagne, and of the Amadises, Palme- 
 rins, and others of Spain. We doubt however if his 
 reading was so extensive ; at least it is not proved by the 
 following passage of the Apology for Smectymnuus, on 
 which the critics seem to rest. 
 
 I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which re- 
 count in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood, founded bj our 
 victorious kings, and from hence had in renown all over Chris- 
 tendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he 
 should defend to the expense of his best blood the honour and 
 chastity of virgin or matron. 
 
 We may observe that Milton, who never uses his 
 words at random, employs that of cantos in speaking of 
 these romances ; from which it is quite evident that it 
 was poems he had chiefly in view, and these could only 
 be the Orlando Innamorato and Furioso, and the Faerie 
 Queen — more especially this last, and possibly the Ama- 
 digi and some others of the romantic poems of Italy. 
 The only prose romance that it appears certain that he 
 read, was the Mort d'Arthur; for there is an evident 
 reference to it in Paradise Regained, and which proves 
 what an enduring impression it had made on his me- 
 mory.* It has however never, we believe, been observed 
 
 * In one of his Academic Prolusions we meet the foUowing passage : 
 ** Nee vahdissimi illi regis Arthorii pugiles igniti et Jlammigerantis cas- 
 telli incantimenta vicerunt facilius et dissiparunt." We cannot tell 
 
246 OPINIONS OF MILTON. 
 
 that he seems also to have read in his early days another 
 English romance, namely, the Seven Champions of Chris- 
 tendom; for the following passage in The Reason of 
 Church Government, seems derived from that romance, 
 rather than from the last cantos of the Legend of Holi- 
 ness in the Paerie Queen. 
 
 More like that huge dragon of Egypt, breathing out waste and 
 desolation to the land, unless he were daily fattened with virgin's 
 blood.* Him our old patron St. Greorge by his matchless valour 
 slew, as the Prelate of the Garter that reads his collect can teU. 
 And if our princes and knights will imitate the fame of that old 
 champion, as by their order of knighthood solemnly taken they 
 vow, far be it that they should uphold and side with this English 
 dragon ; but rather, to do as indeed their oaths bind them, they 
 should make it their knightly adventure to pursue and vanquish 
 this mighty sail-wingedf monster that menaces to swallow up the 
 land, unless her bottomless gorge may be satisfied with the blood 
 of the King's daughter, the Church ; and may, as she was wont, 
 fiU her dark and infamous den with the bones of the saints. 
 
 where he got this ; for we recoUect nothing of the kind in the Mort 
 d' Arthur, and we have not the book in om* possession. 
 
 * " If he be not every day appeased with the body of a true virgin." 
 — Seven Champions. 
 
 t His flaggy wings, when forth he did display, 
 Were like two sails.^F. Q. i. 11, 10. 
 
PART III. 
 
 WRITINGS or MILTON, 
 
WRITINGS OF MILTON. 
 
 VERSE. 
 
 The Writings of Milton are now to come under consi- 
 deration. These are both in English and in Latin : of 
 the former we will treat in some detail, while on the 
 latter we will content ourselves with making merely a 
 few observations. As we have no English prose of Mil- 
 ton's of so early a date as the greater part of his poetry 
 anterior to Paradise Lost, we will commence with an ac- 
 count of his earlier poems. 
 
 In treating of Milton's poetry, we will not venture, in 
 imitation of Johnson and others, to erect ourselves into 
 critics and sit in judgement on it, pronouncing authorita- 
 tively on the merits and demerits of the pieces that come 
 under consideration. Eor this purpose a mind nearly 
 equal to the poet's own would be required ; and few, we 
 apprehend, can lay claim with justice to a possession 
 of such eminence. Eor our own part, we frankly declare 
 that, conscious of our immense inferiority to the poet in 
 mental power, we would not presume to sit in judgement 
 on what bears the stamp of his own approval ; for it 
 should always be remembered that these poems were 
 
\ 
 
 250 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 not — as is but too much the case nowadays — given to 
 the world immediately after they had been composed, 
 but were, for the most part, retained in the poet's desk 
 for many years, and were not published till the time 
 when his judgement was in its full maturity and vigour. 
 In our eyes they are, we may say, all beauty and perfec- 
 tion, bating that compliance with the false taste of the 
 age, to be discerned in some of the earlier pieces, but 
 from which he speedily emancipated himself. The other 
 apparent faults all vanish when we obey that primary 
 but too often neglected law of criticism, of placing our- 
 selves, as far as possible, in the position of the poet, and 
 bring to our mind the opinions that prevailed, and the 
 meaning that words bore in his time. All then that we 
 propose to do is to offer such illustrations of the various 
 pieces as will enable the reader to enter into their mean- 
 ing, and enjoy their manifold beauties. The explanation 
 of particular terms and passages must of course be re- 
 served for the annotations on the respective poems. We 
 will here notice them in the order in which they appear 
 to have been written. 
 
 PAEAPHEASES OF PSALMS CXIV. AND CXXXVI. 
 
 These paraphrases, as the poet himself informs us, 
 were executed " at fifteen years old,'' i. e. in his sixteenth 
 year, and therefore while he was at St. Paul's School. 
 The versification is vigorous and elegant, and the ideas 
 which he has introduced are correct and poetical. War- 
 ton has noticed with praise the expressions, " the golden- 
 tressed sun," " God's thunder-clasping hand," and ''above 
 the reach of mortal eye!' At a subsequent period, namely 
 while residing at Horton, Milton translated the former of 
 these psalms also into Greek. 
 
ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT. 251 
 
 Ol^ THE DEATH OF A FAIE INFANT, 
 
 DYING OP A COUaH. 
 
 This ode, Milton's earliest attempt at original poetic 
 composition, as far as is known to us, was written in the 
 winter of 1625, about the time that he had completed 
 his seventeenth year. The occasion was the deathi»of an 
 infant daughter (see the last stanza) of his sister Mrs. 
 Phillips, born probably in the preceding autumn, and 
 who died, as it would appear, of the hooping-cough. It 
 is very remarkable that this beautiful poem was not in- 
 cluded in the collection of his verses which he published 
 in 1645. That this was not owing to its want of merit 
 in the eyes of its parent is manifest, for it appeared in 
 the edition of 1673 — nearly half a century after it had 
 been composed. We do not suspect that this originated 
 in an over-rigorous adherence to the rule Nonumque pre- 
 matur i7i annum ; the probability is that he had given 
 his sister the only copy he had made of it, and that he 
 did not recollect it when he was preparing his poems for 
 publication. 
 
 In this juvenile production, we meet with that mixture 
 of classic mythology with Christian ideas which prevailed 
 all over Europe till late in the eighteenth century, and 
 which is not yet quite gone out of use in the poetry of 
 the South. It probably originated with Dante and his 
 contemporaries in their attacks on the Church of Rome, 
 in symbol and allegory ; and as the gods of Greece and 
 Rome came very generally to be regarded as personifi- 
 cations, the practice was far less absurd than it might 
 appear to be on a superficial view. Besides, the constant 
 study of the Classics in those times gave a reality in the 
 minds of readers to everything that they contained, of 
 
252 WRITINGS or MILTON VERSE. 
 
 which we cannot in these days form an adequate concep- 
 tion; but without which, we must be unable to enter 
 fully into the spirit and enjoy the beauties of those 
 poets who wrote under the influence of such feelings 
 and sentiments. The most remarkable instance, we may 
 here observe, of this confusion of heathen and Christian 
 ideas,, is that beautiful poem the Lusiadas, in which, 
 though the author assures us that he uses the deities of 
 classic mythology only in a figurative and allegoric sense, 
 still, when we do our utmost to place ourselves in his 
 condition, and regard them with complacency, we find 
 success almost unattainable. 
 
 Milton commences by representing the subject of his 
 verse under the figure of a flower, and he supposes that 
 Winter, envious of the success of Aquilo {i. e. Boreas), 
 his charioteer, in carrying off" Orithyia, resolved to purvey 
 himself a wife in like fashion. Mounting then his " icy- 
 pearled " car, he wandered through the air till he espied 
 this fair one; but unaware of the eff'ect of his "cold, 
 kind " embrace, he " unhoused her virgin soul from her 
 fair biding-place." The poet consoles her by recalling 
 to mind the parallel fate of Hyacinthus ; but he cannot 
 persuade himself that she is really dead, and he prays 
 her to inform him whether she has become a dweller of 
 the Empyrean or of the Elysian Fields, and what was 
 the cause of her so speedy departure. He asks if she 
 was a star fallen from the sky, which Jove had restored 
 to its place, or a goddess who had fled to conceal her- 
 self on earth during a late attack of " Earth's sons " on 
 the "sheeny Heaven ;" was she Astrsea, or Mercy, "that 
 sweet-smiling youth," or the matron " v/hite-robed " 
 Truth, or any other of " that heavenly brood," or finally, 
 one of the " gold-winged " host of angels come down to 
 
ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT. 253 
 
 show to mankind "what creatures heaven doth breed"? 
 In the close, he consoles the mother for her loss, and 
 assures her, that if she bears it patiently, God will give 
 her another offspring, that will make her name live " till 
 the world's last end " — an assurance verified at least by 
 this poem. 
 
 The language of this ode is exquisitely poetic, and the 
 imagery and sentiments give evidence of the first faint 
 dawn of the Paradise Lost. The measure is the poet's 
 own formation ; for, adopting the seven-lined stanza used 
 by Chaucer in his Troilus and Cressida and some of his 
 other poems, and by Sackville in his Induction to the 
 Mirror of Magistrates, he changed the last line from the 
 original form of five feet to one of six feet, as in the 
 Spenserian stanza. It is very remarkable that the very 
 same thing was done by Phineas Fletcher in his Purple 
 Island; and, as this poem was not published till 1633, 
 it is quite evident that Milton could not have imitated 
 the structure of its verse.* 
 
 In the edition of 1673 the eighth stanza is printed 
 in the following manner : — 
 
 " Or wert thou that just Maid who once before 
 
 Forsook the hated earth, ! tell me sooth. 
 
 And cam'st again to visit us once more ? 
 
 Or wert thou that sweet-smiling Youth ! 
 
 Or that cown'd Matron sage, white-robed truth ? 
 Or any other of that heav'nly brood 
 Let down in cloudie throne to do the world some good ?" 
 
 It will be seen at once that the fourth line is short by 
 a foot, and it can hardly be doubted that the missing 
 word is Mercy, which we have no hesitation in restoring 
 to the text, though Warton was more scrupulous, when 
 it was suggested to him by a gentleman named Heskin ; 
 
 * There is however a diflference, for in Fletcher's stanza the last 
 three lines form a triplet. 
 
254 WRITINGS OP MILTON VERSE. 
 
 for in the Ode on the Nativity (st. xv.), Truth, Justice, 
 and Mercy are placed together, and the last, as here, 
 occupies the middle station ; Mercy and Truth are also 
 associated in the Scriptures, see Ps. xxv. 10, Prov. xxvi. 6. 
 The error may have originated in the following manner. 
 The compositor omitted Mercy, and as Justice is merely 
 called " that just maid," and " truth," in this edition, 
 begins with a small letter, the person who read the proof 
 — for it is hardly possible it could have been read to 
 Milton himself — may have supposed that " sweet-smiling 
 youth" was the whole, his eye not noting the measure. 
 
 The additional poems in this edition — which other- 
 wise follows that of 1645 even in its errors of punc- 
 tuation — do not seem to have been read with any care ; 
 for in the very next line, we may observe that crowned is 
 printed co^vned. We may see by this, as we will show 
 more fully hereafter, how little value should be attached 
 to the phrase " the author's own edition." 
 
 The reader may perhaps feel a curiosity to know why 
 Milton should have made Mercy a youth, while Truth 
 and Justice are females. The reason probably is, that 
 the young poet may have observed that merc^ in Hebrew 
 is a masculine, while truth is a feminine noun, and he 
 thence thought they should be thus personified. He 
 may also have had in view the eighty-fifth Psalm, where 
 it is said, " Mercy and truth are met together, righteous- 
 ness and peace have kissed," and have forgotten that it 
 is the masculine, not the feminine, form of the word ex- 
 pressing righteousness that is used. 
 
 AT A VACATION EXEECISE, ETC. 
 
 These verses, though written in the poet's twentieth 
 year {anno cetatis xiw.), i. e. in 1628, were not printed 
 
VACATION EXERCISE. 255 
 
 till 1673, the copy probably having gone astray at the 
 time he was first pubKshing his collected poems. In the 
 edition of 1673 it was printed, the last but one of the 
 original poems; but in the errata, directions are given 
 to place it immediately after the verses on the Death of 
 a Pair Infant, which is set as the second of the original 
 poems in that volume, — a proof that the poet aimed at 
 somewhat of chronologic arrangement in his composi- 
 tions. The heading of it is " At a Vacation Exercise in 
 the College, part Latin, part English. The Latin speeches 
 ended, the English thus began." Among our poet's Pro- 
 lusions is one which was pronounced " In Feriis sestivis 
 Collegii, sed concurrente, ut solet, tota fere Academise 
 juventute," the subject of which is " Exercitationes non- 
 nunquam ludicras Philosophise Studiis non obesse," and 
 this is probably the Latin speech to which he alludes; 
 for he was very careful in preserving all his compositions. 
 Whatever the speech was, it is evident from z?. 12 of the 
 poem, that he rated it below the English compositions 
 which followed it. 
 
 He commences with an address to his " Native Lan- 
 guage," in which he manages to bring in some of the 
 most attractive subjects of ancient poetry ; and then he 
 introduces the Ens, with his two sons the Predicaments, 
 " whereof the eldest stood for Substance with his 
 canons." Ens addresses his son Substance in a speech 
 in the commencement highly poetic, and then really hu- 
 morous. " The next. Quantity and Quality spake in prose ; 
 then Relation was called by his name." This is fol- 
 lowed by an address, in verse, to the principal rivers of 
 England, of which we freely confess, with Warton, that 
 we cannot see the relevance or the connection with the 
 subject. " The rest was prose." 
 
256 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 The verses are all heroic couplets, such as he had 
 already employed in his translation of the 114th 
 Psalm. 
 
 EPITAPH ON THE MAECHIONESS OF WINCHESTEE. 
 
 The subject of this pleasing poem was Jane, first wife 
 of John, Marquis of Winchester, a Catholic nobleman, 
 afterwards so conspicuous for his fidelity to Charles L, 
 and his gallant defence of his house at Basingstoke, in 
 Hants, against the troops of the Parliament. She was 
 daughter to Thomas Viscount Savage, of Rock-Savage, 
 in Cheshire, by Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of 
 Thomas Darcy, Earl of Rivers.* She died in childbed 
 of her second son, in her twenty-third year ; the year of 
 her death is uncertain, but, as it will appear, it could not 
 have been later than 1628. 
 
 This lady appears to have been a highly accomplished 
 person. Warton quotes a letter of Howell's to her, 
 dated, he tells us, March 15, 1626, in which he says 
 that he had assisted her in learning Spanish, and that 
 Nature and the Graces had exhausted all their treasure 
 and skill in " framing this exact model of female perfec- 
 tion." The death, then, of so eminent a person proba- 
 bly caused what is termed a sensation, and, in the man- 
 ner usual at the time, it became the theme of poetry. 
 Warton says he had heard, but doubted if it was the 
 case, that there was a Cambridge collection of verses on 
 her death. Todd however informs us that in a volume 
 
 * CoUins' Peerage, ii. 379. Hence Milton says — 
 
 ' A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir.' 
 While Beaumont speaks of her " father's earldom." The former there- 
 fore seems to confound her with her mother, and the latter to mistake 
 her father for her grandfather. 
 
ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER. 257 
 
 of manuscript poems in the British Museum, this epitaph 
 occurs, with the date 1631, and at the bottom, "Jo. 
 Milton, of Chr. Coll., Cambr." Mr. Hunter also informs 
 us that in a contemporary collection of Peers' Pedigrees, 
 in his possession, the same year is the date of the Mar- 
 chioness' death. We have here then a clear proof of 
 how little such documents are to be relied on, for this 
 date is indubitably erroneous, as in the poems of Sir 
 John Beaumont, published posthumously in 1629, there 
 is one to the memory of this lady, so that, as we have 
 said, she must have died in 1628, at latest. We regard 
 however the fact of there having been a Cambridge 
 collection as certain ; and those who set the matter on 
 foot, whether the University authorities or not, probably 
 sought the aid of Milton, who, although he had as yet 
 written hardly anything in English, had in the close of 
 1626 distinguished himself by his Latin poems on the 
 death of eminent personages. It is not at all likely that 
 he would of his own accord have made the theme of his 
 verse a lady of whom he could have known nothing but 
 what common fame told. Warton however gives on 
 this occasion a ciu"ious specimen of his sycophancy to 
 the Egerton family. "It is natural to suppose," says he, 
 " that her family was well acquainted with the family 
 of Lord Bridge water, belonging to the same county, for 
 whom Milton wrote the Mask of Comus. It is therefore 
 not improbable that Milton wrote this elegy, another 
 poetical favour, in consequence of his acquaintance with 
 the Egerton family." He actually would thus seem to 
 make it posterior in order of composition to Comus ! 
 But ' mark now how a plain tale shall put him down.' 
 Milton's acquaintance with the Egerton family, if any, 
 which we doubt, is allowed to have originated in his 
 
V 
 
 258 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 father's acquisition of the house at Horton, on the estate 
 of Lord Bridge water ; but this poem, as we have seen, 
 could not have been written later than 1628, when Mil- 
 ton was in his twentieth year, and there seems to be no 
 reason for supposing that his father had as yet gone to 
 live at Horton. 
 
 Critics in general are agreed in acknowledging this to 
 be a most pleasing poem. Hallam indeed qualifies his 
 praise by saying that " the first lines are bad, and the 
 last much worse ;" and Dunster wishes that the poem 
 had ended at the sixty-eighth verse, as " what follows 
 seems only to weaken it, and the last verse is an eminent 
 instance of the bathos.'' With this criticism we cannot 
 quite agree. The first lines are a simple exposition of 
 the subject, teUing who the person celebrated was ; and 
 as to the bathos of the last verse, 
 
 No Marchioness, but now a Queen, 
 
 Milton had probably in his mind those passages of Scrip- 
 ture in which the pious departed are spoken of as kings, 
 and as reigning with Christ, and he therefore naturally, 
 when the subject was a female, employed the term queen 
 to express that degree of spiritual exaltation. 
 
 The verse is in four-foot measure. It is probably his 
 first employment of this species of verse, which he after- 
 wards used with so much success in L' Allegro, II Pensc- 
 roso, and Comus. 
 
 Respecting this verse an error seems generally to pre- 
 vail among critics. Observing that it consists of lines 
 of seven as well as of eight syllables, ex. gr. — 
 
 This rich marble doth inter 
 
 The honoured wife of Winchester, 
 
 they call the former a trochaic, the latter an iambic 
 
ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER. 259 
 
 verse.* Such however is not the case. The trochaic 
 Hue was at that time unknown to EngUsh poetry, and, 
 if we mistake not, continued to be so till Percy used it 
 in his translations of some Spanish romances ; for though 
 some preceding poems, such as Shenstone's Princess 
 Elizabeth and Glover's Hosier's Ghost, appear to be 
 trochaic, they are not such in reality,! but will, if accu- 
 rately considered, be found to be iambics with the first 
 foot monosyllabic, and the last hypermetric, as in 
 
 But hail, thou goddess sage and holy, 
 Sail, divinest Melancholy ! 
 
 Trochaic verse was familiar to the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans, who seem to have transmitted it to the Proven- 
 gals and Spaniards, J from whom it was borrowed by 
 
 * We will here observe, once for all, that we use these metric terms, 
 as applied to modem verse, because the ictus, or metric accent, is the 
 same as in the classic verses of these names. Modern verse does not 
 attend much to quantity. 
 
 t In these poems the lines will generally be found to commence with 
 monosyllables, while trochaic verse usually is fond of dissyllables. The 
 movement of genuine trochaic verse is also different from that of these 
 poems, — more light and tripping. It is not easy, in fact, to compose 
 genuine trochaic verse in English. 
 
 X The popular verse of the Romans ran thus : — 
 
 Ec'ce Cae'sar mine triumphat, 
 
 Qui subegit G-allias. — Suet. Jul. 49 ; 
 
 Disce miles militare, 
 
 Galba est non Gsetulicus. — Id. Galha, 6 : 
 which is just the measure of the Spanish romances : — 
 
 Niinca fuera caballero 
 
 De damas tan bieu servido 
 
 Como fuera Lanzarote 
 
 Cuando de Bretana vino. 
 The Spanish verse, as we may see in the second line, admits the iamb 
 in the first two feet. 
 
 Conde however (see Ticknor, Hist, of Span. Lit. i. 100) says, " In 
 the versification of our CastiUan ballads {romances) and segiddillas, we 
 have received from the Arabs an exact type of their verses." We doubt 
 the fact. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 the early poets of Germany, while the poetry of Italy re- 
 jected it almost totally, till about the time when, as we 
 have stated, it was introduced into English poetry.* 
 
 The early English poetry was regulated by ictus, or 
 beats, not by the number of syllables ; it therefore should 
 be measured by feet, and each foot may contain either 
 two, or three syllables, or even only one at the begin- 
 ning or after the ccesura. Thus even in our own days, 
 in Byron's line, 
 
 Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle, 
 
 the first foot is monosyllabic, and yet it is to be counted 
 as an anapaest. Numerous instances of the same kind 
 will be found in Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar. In Sir 
 Walter Scott's 
 
 March, march, Ettrick and Tevidale, 
 
 the two first monosyllables are to be counted as dactyls, 
 for the other lines are completely dactylic. So in Mil- 
 ton's Hymn on the Nativity, the two first lines of each 
 stanza are of three feet, or, as is the usual expression, 
 of six syllables : — 
 
 It was the winter wild, 
 While the heaven-born child.f 
 
 Yet we afterwards meet — 
 
 When such music sweet 
 Their hearts and ears did greet. 
 
 * Dante's contemporary, Barberini, had used trochaics in his Mot- 
 tetti, and a poet named Serafino Aquilano, who flourished in the fif- 
 teenth century, wrote trochaic verses ui imitation of the Spanish Co- 
 plas (Lope de Vega, Prologo al Isido). 
 
 t It wiU be observed that in this line horn is to be pronounced as a 
 dissyllable ; for Milton would never have placed the ictus on such a 
 word as the. So in the third hue of the present poem — 
 
 "A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir," 
 for the same reason earl is dissyllabic, as also is ham in L'Allegro, 
 
ON Christ's nativity. 261 
 
 And then at last our bliss 
 Tull and perfect is. 
 
 Nor all tlie gods beside 
 Longer dare abide. 
 
 It is then consonant to reason and logic to affirm that 
 these supposed trochaics, even though whole poems have 
 been composed exclusively in them, are in reality iambic 
 verses of four feet, the first foot being monosyllabic. 
 There are, as we have observed, even instances of the 
 third foot also being such, ex. gr. 
 
 Over hill, over dale, 
 Thorough bush, thorough brier, 
 Over park, over pale, 
 Thorough flood, thorough fire. 
 
 Mids. Nighfs Drea/m^ ii. 1. 
 Follow me, as I sing 
 And touch the warbled string. 
 
 Arcades^ 86. 
 Sometimes swift, sometimes slow. — Dyer^ Qrongar Hill. 
 
 Some might choose to call these Cretics, but that is a 
 foot unknown to English poetry. 
 
 GIST THE MOENING OF CHEIST'S NATIVITY. 
 
 This admirable ode, which, as Hallam justly observes, 
 
 is " perhaps the most beautiful in the Enghsh language," 
 
 was composed in the winter of 1629, just as the poet had 
 
 completed his twenty-first year. Italy and Spain were 
 
 V. 51. This was a common practice with our old poets. Fire and hour 
 frequently form two syllables. 
 
 Fit mother for ^dit pearl, and before. — Fairfax, G-odf. of Buil.i. 59. 
 
 In four troops, and each his several guide. — Id. ib. xvii. 14. 
 
 My oars broken and my tackling lost. — Marloto, Dido, m. 1. 
 
 Be rushed upon ; thy trice noble cousin. — Rich. II. iii. 3. 
 
 And is not like the sire : honours thrive. — AlVs Well, etc., ii. 3*. 
 ^ Crying, that's good that's gone. Our rash faults — Ib. v. 3.. 
 
262 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 already in possession of splendid lyric poetry, but Eng- 
 land had as yet, unless we except Spenser's Hymns to 
 Love and Beauty, and his nuptial verses, nothing of the 
 kind to produce beyond short songs, and this remained 
 the solitary specimen of the higher lyric poetry till Dry- 
 den arose. We offer no particular criticism on it, for it 
 is, in effect, nearly all beauty. As such we regard even 
 ^ the introduction of the Heathen deities ; for they add 
 much to the picturesqueness of the imagery; and we are 
 to recollect that in the opinion of the Rabbin and of 
 many of the Fathers, they were real beings, namely, evil 
 spirits which had been cast out of heaven. Johnson did 
 not condescend even to notice this exquisite production, 
 and Warton, having termed the nineteenth and twenty- 
 sixth stanzas " the best part of the ode," adds, " The rest 
 chiefly consists of a string of affected conceits, which his 
 early youth and the fashion of the times can only ex- 
 cuse." Becoming language indeed for the Oxford Pro- 
 fessor of Poetry ! He is however willing to allow that 
 " there is a dignity and simplicity in the fourth stanza of 
 the hymn, worthy the maturest years and the best times. 
 Nor is the poetry of the stanza immediately following, 
 an expression or two excepted, unworthy of Milton." 
 
 In the Introduction, Milton employs the stanza he had 
 used in his verses on A Fair Infant. For the Hymn, he 
 uses a stanza of eight lines, also devised by himself, con- 
 sisting of two lines of three feet, followed by one of five ; 
 the same repeated ; and then one of four, and a final line 
 of six feet. 
 
 UPON THE CIECUMCISION. 
 
 This short ode, consisting of two stanzas of fourteen 
 lines each, — w^hich we have been the first, we believe, to 
 
THE PASSION. 263 
 
 divide, — was probably written immediately after that on 
 the Nativity. Its brevity is, of course, owing to the na- 
 ture of the subject, which did not offer much or agree- 
 able matter for poetry. In it we meet with the Augus- 
 tinian notions of satisfaction, which Milton, spite of his 
 freedom of thought, seems to have held to the end of 
 his life. 
 
 This stanza also is Milton's own. It consists chiefly 
 of lines of five feet, with two of three feet after the se- . 
 venth verse, and ending with three lines of three, two, 
 and three feet respectively. 
 
 THE PASSION. 
 
 This ode was probably undertaken about the Easter 
 after the one on the Nativity. If, as Warton conjectures, 
 this last was a college exercise, the authorities, who saw 
 how he had succeeded in that task, imposed the present 
 on him also. But we doubt the correctness of this 
 theory. Christmas is in the middle of a vacation, when 
 the students are mostly with their families; and the Latin 
 Elegy to Diodati, in which he tells him that he was at 
 work on this ode, was evidently written toward Christ- 
 mas, and from London. The circumstance of the ode 
 on the Passion not having been completed also militates 
 against the probability of its having been an imposed 
 task. The poet modestly tells us that " This subject the 
 author finding to be above the years he had when he 
 wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left 
 it unfinished." It must be confessed, that though the^'' 
 opening stanzas are very fine, and the sixth remarkably 
 so, yet it does not seem at all likely that it could ever 
 have vied with that on the Nativity. It also contains 
 concetti, worthy of the Italian school of Mariiii, or of 
 
264 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Donne and Cowley, and probably these are the parts 
 with which the poet was " nothing satisfied ;" his natural 
 taste revolting against that of the age, with which he was 
 forcing himself to comply. The stanza is the same as 
 that employed in the introduction to the Nativity, and 
 possibly it had been his intention to add a hymn in a 
 different measure. 
 
 EPITAPH ON SHAKESPEAEE. 
 
 These lines first appeared among the commendatory 
 verses prefixed to the second folio edition, in 1632, of 
 Shakespeare's Plays. It might therefore seem most pro- 
 bable that they were written in that year; but Milton 
 himself, when printing them in the first edition of his 
 poems, gives them the date of 1630. His memory 
 might however have played him false on this as on 
 some other occasions, — a matter here certainly of very 
 little importance. The verses are valuable, as showing 
 the high estimation in which Milton, who always ex- 
 pressed his real thoughts, held the immortal dramatist. 
 Hurd objected to the thought expressed in the con- 
 cluding lines, as being more in the manner of Waller 
 than of Milton. This criticism is perhaps well founded, 
 but the idea seems to have pleased the imagination of 
 Pope, who adopted it in his Epitaph on Gay. 
 
 ON THE UNIVEESITY CAEEIEE. 
 
 These two sportive effusions were written on the oc- 
 casion of the death of Hobson, a celebrated carrier, who 
 plied between Cambridge and London, and from whom 
 is derived the proverbial expression of "Hobson's choice," 
 explained in the Spectator (No. 509). Hurd wonders 
 that Milton should have inserted them in his edition of 
 
ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER. 265 
 
 1645 ; but Milton, as we have already observed, deemed 
 nothing that he wrote to be worthless, and he presumed 
 that the reader would take them for what they were^ 
 meant to be — mere plays of fancy. The first is certainly 
 light and amusing ; in the second the humour is more 
 elaborate, the allusions more far-fetched, and the mean- 
 ing not always easily to be ascertained. As Hobson 
 died, it appears, January the 1st, 1630-31, while the 
 plague was in London, these verses, it is probable, were 
 written sometime in that month. 
 
 In the latter of these two poems, there is a passage 
 of which we confess ourselves almost unable to make 
 any sense :■ — 
 
 His leisure told him that his time was come, 
 And lack of load made his life burdensome, 
 That even to his last breath — there be that say it — 
 As he were prest to death he cried, More weight ! 
 
 The only conjectures which we can make are, that it 
 may be an allusion — and a very remote one — to the 
 punishment of the peine forte et dure, in which the suf- 
 ferer might call for more weight to be laid on him by 
 way of a coup de grace, — (we may observe, that " lack 
 of load made his life so burdensome, that,"* etc. ;) or, 
 as at the time, were was sometimes used for was after 
 conjunctions,! the meaning might be, as {i. e. while) he 
 was pressed to death with the weight or stupor of his 
 disease. 
 
 * Our friend Mr. Singer, to whom we communicated this conjecture, 
 informed us that a friend of his had given the very same explanation of 
 the passage. 
 
 f " Like one that strove to shew his merry mood 
 
 When he were ill-disposed." 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, Maid's Tragedy, iii. 2. 
 
266 WRITINGS OF MILTON— VERSE. 
 
 AT A SOLEMN MUSIC. 
 
 We have no means of ascertaining the date of this 
 poem ; but from the turn of the thoughts, similar to 
 those in his odes on the events of our Lord's hfe, we 
 feel inclined to ascribe it to one of the latter years of 
 Milton's residence at the University. His mind was 
 probably occupied at that time with serious ideas, as he 
 seems to have been meditating on the subject of theo- 
 logy, with a view to adopting the Church as a profession. 
 
 It consists of only twenty-eight lines ; the measure is 
 five-foot, in general with one couplet of four-foot, and 
 one single verse of the three-foot measure. 
 
 ON TIME. To BE SET ON A Clock-case. 
 
 Here, too, we have no means of fixing the date. The 
 high and solemn tone however, so nearly akin to that of 
 the poem just noticed, would lead us to suppose that 
 it might have been written about the same time. We 
 therefore place it among those composed before he 
 quitted the University. 
 
 The measure is of the same character as that of the 
 preceding poem; verses of five feet, with some of four 
 and three feet interspersed. 
 
 SONNET I. [VII.]* 
 
 ON HIS BEIIfG AERIVED AT THE AGE OE TWENTT-THEEE. 
 
 Of this sonnet, Warton states as follows : — " Written 
 at Cambridge, in 1631 [in November], and sent in a 
 
 * The numbers within brackets are those of the Sonnets in Todd's 
 edition. 
 
SONNET. 267 
 
 letter to a friend, who had importuned our author to 
 take orders. Of this letter there are two drafts in the 
 Trinity manuscript.* He there says, You object ' that 
 I have given myself up to dream away my years in 
 the arms of studious retirement, like Endymion with 
 the moon on Latmus hill.' He calls this sonnet, 'my 
 nigJitward thoughts sometime since made up in a Pe- 
 trarchian stanza.' '' 
 
 This was Milton's first attempt in this species of com-^ 
 position, and though it is by no means devoid of merit, 
 and is dignified and solemn in its tone, like all his po- 
 etry of that period, we must regard it as inferior to many 
 of his other compositions of this kind, Wa learn from it 
 that he was at that time famihar with the Italian poets ; 
 for he would never have alluded to Petrarca as he does, 
 if he knew him only at second-hand. Besides, as it is ^ 
 the earliest English specimen of a sonnet formed on the * 
 Italian model, he must have derived his knowledge of 
 this form from Italian poetry. 
 
 The sonnet is the invention of the. Italians, for there is 
 no trace of it in the Provencal poetry. The earliest spe- 
 cimen is that of Lodovico Vernaccia, to which the date 
 
 * Of tliis celebrated MS. a full account will be found in the second 
 edition of Warton's edition of Milton's poems. The pieces forming it 
 were, it seems, found by Dr. Mason, in the eighteenth century, among 
 the MSS. bequeathed in the preceding century to Trinity CoUege, 
 Cambridge, by Sir Henry Newton Puckering, and they were handsomely 
 bound up in 1736, at the charge of Thomas Clarke, afterwards Master 
 of the Eolls. It contains Arcades, Comus, Lycidas, Ode on Circumci- 
 sion, At a Solemn Music, On Time, Sonnets IX., X., XI., XII., XIII., 
 XVI., XVIII. (according to our arrangement), in Milton's own hand, 
 and Sonnets VIII., XV., XIX., XX., XXIIL, XXIV., in different 
 female hands. It also contains a copious list of subjects for the drama, 
 and two copies of the letter quoted in the text, in the poet's own hand- 
 writing. 
 
268 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 of A.D. 1200 is given;* the next is, by Piero delle Vigne, 
 the Chancellor of Frederick 11. , who flourished in the 
 early part of the thirteenth century. It does not how- 
 ever follow that Vernaccia was the inventor of the son- 
 net, for he may have followed a model now lost. It soon 
 became a favourite form with the Italian Cantori d'Amore, 
 and has remained such till the present day. The cele- 
 brated sonnets of Petrarca are numerous, but they are 
 far exceeded in quantity by those of Torquato Tasso, the 
 most prolific writer in this department of literature that 
 ever existed, for his published sonnets are at least one 
 thousand in number. In the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century, the sonnet was adopted, along with the other 
 Italian forms, by the poets of the Iberian peninsula ; the 
 most celebrated sonnets are, we believe, those of the un- 
 fortunate Luis de Camoes. Not being well suited to the 
 genius of the poetry of France, the sonnet does not ap- 
 pear ever to have found much favour in that country. It 
 was used by some of the poets of Holland in the seven- 
 teenth century, but we are not aware of its adoption by 
 the contemporary poets of Germany. It had more suc- 
 cess in England, where it was introduced by Surrey and 
 Wyatt in the reign of Henry VIII.; and we have nu- 
 merous sonnets by Sydney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Daniell, 
 Drayton, Drummond, and others. We do not meet with 
 sonnets after the time of Milton, for nearly a century, 
 when Edwards, the author of Canons of Criticism, wrote 
 some, and Gray, and one or two others, single sonnets, 
 in the Italian form, which also was used by T. Warton, 
 in the latter part of the century, while Bowles and Char- 
 lotte Smith and Helen Maria Williams reverted to the 
 
 * See Poeti del primo Secolo della Lingua Italiana, vol. i. page 18. 
 It is the third poem in that collection. 
 
SONNET. 269 
 
 easy form of the old English sonnets. The poet of the 
 present century most distinguished as a writer of son- 
 nets is Wordsworth, who made Milton his model.* 
 
 The reader hardly requires to be told that the Italian 
 sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen five-foot lines, 
 divided into two quatrains {quaternarj) and two tercets 
 iterzine). In the former there are only two rimes, and the 
 most usual form is when the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth 
 lines have the one, and the remaining four lines the other 
 rime; but sometimes in Petrarca, and the older poets, 
 the rhimes are alternate. In the tercets much greater 
 liberty is allowed ; the rimes are sometimes two, but 
 more generally three, and arranged at the wiU of the 
 poet, but never in couplets. 
 
 The English poets totally altered the form of the son- 
 net. In their hands it became a poem of fourteen lines, 
 consisting of three quatrains and a final couplet. Each 
 quatrain had in general its own two independent rimes, 
 but sometimes the same rimes were carried through two 
 or even all the quatrains. The present sonnet of Mil- 
 ton's appears to have been the first return to the ge- 
 nuine Italian form made in the English language. He 
 does not however always strictly adhere to it ; for in his 
 sonnet to Cromwell there are three quatrains termi- 
 nated by a couplet, the two first however having, in the 
 Italian manner, only two rimes. Three out of his five ^^ 
 
 Italian sonnets also end in couplets, in which he may ., -ti:^ 
 have fancied he had the authority of Dante and Petrarca ; -** 
 
 but in these poets they are triplets, the tercets having 
 only two rimes. 
 
 * Among Milton's sonnets, Wordsworth is said (Life, i. 289) to have 
 given the preference to VIII., XVIII., XIX., XXI., XXII., XXIV., 
 in our arrangement. 
 
270 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 The preceding poems, — whether tasks imposed on his 
 genius, or its vokmtary effusions, written toward the close 
 of Milton's academic career, and when his thoughts were 
 ,very much directed toward theology, — have a solemn, 
 serious, religious cast, suitable to the frame of mind in 
 which we may suppose him to have been at that period. 
 But when he had abandoned all thoughts of adopting 
 the Church as a profession, and had retired to the rural 
 seclusion of Horton, his mind took a different turn, and 
 his poetry in consequence assumed a gayer attire ; and 
 it is perhaps no unsafe mode of procedure to assign to 
 Horton all his poetry of a brighter hue, and in which we 
 meet with rural imagery. 
 
 SONG ON MAY MOENING. 
 
 No date is assigned to this charming song, but we 
 think there can hardly be a doubt of its having been 
 written at Horton, on some lovely morning in the month 
 of May. 
 
 The commencement and conclusion arc in five-foot, the 
 song in four-foot measure. 
 
 SONNET II. [I.] TO THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 We would also assign these beautiful lines to Horton, 
 and to the month of May, for the reasons given above. 
 In our eyes this sonnet is absolute perfection, and most 
 certainly equal to anything of the kind in the Italian or 
 any other language. Yet Johnson, it seems, could dis- 
 cern no merit in it ; and even Wordsworth, as w^ have 
 seen, did not rank it among those to which he gave the 
 preference. 
 
 The concluding lines of this sonnet should serve as a 
 warning to critics and biographers not to be too ready to 
 
l' ALLEGRO. IL PENSEROSO. 271 
 
 find traits of personal history in the productions of poets. 
 We might, for instance, be induced to infer from it, 
 that Milton was the victim of a hopeless attachment, and 
 a very pretty theory might be formed from it, taken in 
 conjunction with the first of his Latin elegies. We have 
 indeed quoted above a little romance, to which it may 
 have given occasion. But we know very well that such 
 was not the case. The poet, in fact, as any one who has 
 written verses must be well aware, is like the painter ; a 
 subject presents itself to the mind of the one and he 
 paints it, of the other and he puts it into a poetic form, 
 assuming the character of the lover, the hero, or what- 
 ever it may be, for the occasion, and then returning to 
 his ordinary frame of mind. A recollection of this truth 
 would dispel more than one ingenious theory. 
 
 L'ALLEGEO AJSJ) IL PENSEEOSO. 
 
 During the happy period of Milton's life spent at 
 Horton, though his mind was occupied by pursuits of 
 the highest intellectual nature, yet poetry undoubtedly 
 was not discarded from his thoughts ; and he probably 
 had always steadily in view his design of producing one 
 day a poem which " the world would not willingly let 
 die." Meanwhile, as if by way of prelude, his mind oc- 
 casionally relaxed itself in poetic composition to oblige 
 his friends, or to give expression to some idea which had 
 presented itself in an attractive form. Such were the 
 subjects of the two beautiful poems now under consi- 
 deration, which, though the exact date cannot be ascer- 
 tained, were beyond question written at Horton. 
 
 It may possibly be — as Warton, always anxious to 
 derogate from the fame of Milton, maintains — that the 
 idea was suggested by the verses prefixed to Burton's 
 
272 WRITINGS or MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, or by a song in Beaumont and 
 . Fletcher's Nice Valour ; but we rather think that it rose 
 spontaneously in the poet's own mind. .-'At all events, 
 Milton seems to have conceived the idea of enumerating 
 and representing the objects more likely to attract the 
 attention of a man of a lively, cheerful temperament, 
 and of another whose disposition was thoughtful and 
 serious. They form a pair of poetic pendents, as we 
 often see pictures in a gallery, and he gave them the 
 respective Italian titles of L' Allegro, or the Cheerful 
 Man, and II Penseroso, or the Thoughtful Man. The 
 measure which he selected for these poems was the four- 
 foot iambic, then so much in use, and equally adapted 
 for light or serious subjects. On the true nature of this 
 measure we have already offered some observations. 
 
 Even Johnson is obliged to allow that of these poems 
 " opinion is uniform ; every man that reads them, reads 
 them with pleasure ;" and he terms them " two noble ef- 
 forts of imagination." Warton, with all his prejudices, 
 also had too much poetic feeling not to be charmed with 
 ^ them. From Hallam they receive unhmited praise. In 
 fact, it is utterly impossible that any one with even a par- 
 ticle of poetic feeling could read them with any sentiments 
 but those of delight and admiration. /'The only objection 
 which Johnson makes seems to be founded on his igno- 
 rance of the exact meaning of the Italian terms employed 
 by Milton. " I know not," says he, " whether the charac- 
 ters are kept sufficiently apart. No mirth can indeed 
 be found in his melancholy, but I am afraid that I always 
 meet some melancholy in his mirth." But if he had ad- 
 hered to his own translation of Allegro, cheerful, he might 
 have seen that mirth in its usual sense was not included 
 in its meaning, but merely tranquil, quiet pleasure, that. 
 
l'aLLEGRO. IL PENSEROSO. 273 
 
 in fact, of a philosophic mind ; and if he had understood 
 the exact meaning of Penseroso, which he most incor- 
 rectly renders by Pensive,^ he would have seen that 
 though Melancholy {la douce Melancolie)\ is invoked, II 
 Penseroso is not by any means what we term a pensive 
 or melancholy man. 
 
 Warton, too, c6mmits an error, when he says that 
 " No man was ever so disquahfed to turn Puritan as 
 Milton. In both these poems he professes himself to 
 be highly pleased with the choral church-music, with 
 Gothic cloisters, the painted windows and vaulted aisles 
 of a venerable cathedral, with tilts and tournaments, and 
 with masks and pageantries." Whatever Milton's real 
 feelings may have been respecting these objects — and he 
 surely was not insensible to the charms of cathedral 
 music or Gothic architecture — we are not justified in 
 deducing any such inferences from the poems. There/"" 
 is, as we have just observed, no greater, though no more 
 common, error, than that of finding the real sentiments 
 and feelings of a poet in his verses. Every good poet 
 is more or less of a dramatist ; he assumes a particular 
 character, or places himself in a peculiar situation, and 
 then thinks and expresses himself as he supposes he 
 should if he were such a person, or so situated.^ So 
 Milton, conceiving himself to be a man of a cheerful 
 or of a serious mood, looks round him and selects the 
 objects most likely to interest such a person^ 
 
 Though loath to ventiu-e to find a fault in such perfect 
 
 * The Italian word is pensieroso, not penseroso, from pensiero, and 
 its proper sense is thoughtful, never pensive, which iapensoso. 
 
 t " There is a joy in grief when peace dwells in the bosom of the 
 sad," is the beautiful Ossianic expression. Another, equally beautiful, 
 is, " Like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to 
 the soul." 
 
274 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 ^ works of so great a poet, we must say that the origin 
 assigned to Melancholy, however philosophically just it 
 may be, has always grated on our feehngs. The species 
 ^^^of incest there described is such as no ideas of a Golden 
 -r^ Age, or any particular state of society, can make accord 
 with our moral instincts, and we must confess that we 
 wish the poet had assigned her different parents. Pos- 
 sibly Milton's mind was influenced by the chorus re- 
 specting the Golden Age in Tasso's Aniinta, where the 
 morality is certainly not of the finest. 
 
 The sequence of ideas in these, the first descriptive 
 poems in our language, is as follows. 
 
 The Cheerful Man, after driving away Melancholy, 
 whom he portrays in the darkest colours, invokes Eu- 
 phrosyne or Mirth, one of the Graces whom Venus bore to 
 Bacchus, or, as he rather chooses to believe, the offspring 
 of Zephyrus and Flora. He invites her to come with all 
 her train, and to " admit him of her crew," and then 
 proceeds to enumerate the circumstances and objects 
 which will yield him pleasure. He commences at day- 
 break with the song of the lark, then he hears and sees 
 the cock among his dames, and next listens to the hound 
 and horn echoing from the hill-side and through the 
 woods. He walks at this hour of prime over hillocks 
 and among hedgerows toward the east, where the sun 
 is now rising, amid the clouds of various hues. He 
 hears the ploughman, the milkmaid, the mower, and the 
 shepherd, at their various occupations. His eye surveys 
 the landscape round, the lawns and fallows, mountains, 
 meads, brooks and rivers. At a distance is a castellated 
 edifice embosomed in trees, the abode, it may be, of 
 some high-born beauty ; at hand, rises from between 
 two aged oaks, the smoke from the chimney of a cot- 
 
l' ALLEGRO. IL PENSEROSO. 275 
 
 tage, where a country lass has prepared the meal at 
 which two peasants are seated, and she then goes out 
 to help to bind the sheaves, or to make the hay. At 
 other times he will repair to the hamlets, which lie on 
 higher grounds, where he will listen to the merry peals 
 of the church-bells, and the jocund sound of the rebeck, 
 to which the village lads and lasses are dancings while 
 the old people and the children also are enjoying the 
 holiday. When dayhght fails, all retire to drink the 
 spicy nut-brown ale, and, after telling stories of fairies 
 and goblins, they go to rest. 
 
 Having thus gone through the pleasures of the coun- 
 try he repairs to the city. Here he witnesses tilts, wed- 
 dings, masks and pageants, and then goes to the theatre 
 to see the comedies of Ben Jonson or Shakespeare. Above 
 all delights, he desires that arising from the union of 
 vocal and instrumental music, and concludes by assuring 
 Mirth that if she yields him these he will live with her 
 for ever. 
 
 The Serious Man after having in a mild tone warned 
 off "vain deluding joys," invokes the presence of the 
 sage and holy goddess, divinest Melancholy, of whose ap- 
 pearance and dress he gives a most fascinating descrip- 
 tion. He prays her not to change her usual mien and 
 gait, and enumerates the members of the train which was 
 to attend her state. The only sound to be heard should 
 be the song of the nightingale, and that " in her sweet- 
 est, saddest plight," while the moon would check her 
 car over an oak-tree to listen to the lay. 
 
 While, as we have seen, the Cheerful Man commences 
 with the song of the lark and the rising of the sun, the 
 Serious Man selects for the same purpose the song of the 
 nightingale and the light of the moon. Should he miss 
 
 " t2 
 
276 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 the former, he walks, unseen by the peasants, who were 
 retired to rest, on the village- green, to observe the latter 
 making her way in heaven through the clouds ; or ascend- 
 ing some rising ground, he listens to the sound of the 
 curfew-bell, as it comes mellowed over the waters of a 
 lake. If the state of the weather were such that he could 
 not have these out-of-door enjoyments, he would sit alone 
 in a room with no light but that proceeding from the 
 "glowing embers," and hearing no sounds but the chirrup 
 of the cricket on the hearth, or the voice of the bellman 
 blessing the house from evil. Or he would sit at midnight 
 by his lamp, in some " high lonely tower," studying the 
 works of Hermes Trismegistus, or Plato, to learn their 
 ideas of the future abode of the soul, and of the various 
 kinds of daemons. At times, the subject of his studies would 
 be the tragedies of ancient Greece, or those few (namely, 
 Shakespeare's) with which modern times had ennobled 
 the "buskined stage." Epic and romantic poetry would 
 also form part of his studies ; for he wishes that Melan- 
 choly had the power to awake Musseus and Orpheus, to 
 sing their lost strains to him, or Chaucer to finish his 
 Squire's Tale ; and he appears to intimate that Spenser, 
 and other romantic poets, would engage his attention.* 
 
 Thus should morn oft find him, not however in his 
 gay, brilliant garb, but wrapt in clouds, attended by 
 piping winds, followed by a shower, whose drops would 
 fall every minute from the eaves when the day began to 
 clear. At noon, when the sun was high and strong, he 
 would retire to the recesses of some dense wood, and 
 there, lulled by the humming of the bees and the mur- 
 muring of the waters, he would fall asleep, and in his 
 
 * It is rather remarkable that the Scriptures do not form a part of 
 the studies of the Serious Man. 
 
ARCADES. 277 
 
 sleep be visited by dreams of delicious mystery. But his 
 favourite haunt would be the cathedral with its cloisters, 
 its pillars, its painted windows, and its choral music, 
 which would 
 
 Dissolve him into ecstasies. 
 
 And bring all heaven before his eyes. 
 
 He finally would seek out ^ hermitage for the abode 
 of his latter days,' and advance in wisdom as he advanced 
 in years. 
 
 Exquisitely beautiful as these poems are, they still 
 furnish a proof that Milton " read Nature through the 
 spectacles of books,"* for we nowhere meet with that 
 accurate description of natural objects, indicative of ac- 
 tual observation, which we find in Homer, Dante, and 
 Thomson. Some too are inaccurate, as the sky-lark 
 coming to his window, and the bee with honeyed thigh 
 {crura thymo ^lena). 
 
 Mountains, on whose barren breast 
 The labouring clouds do often rest, 
 
 is a kind of guess at Nature ; for we know not where he 
 might have read of it, and are certain that he could not 
 have seen it when he wrote these poems, f 
 
 AECADES. 
 
 As we have stated in the Life of Milton J, the Coun- 
 tess Dowager of Derby resided at Harefield, near Ux- 
 
 * See above, page 103, how his friend Diodati raUies him on this 
 habit. 
 
 t " After a certain point of elevation, the eflPect of mountains depends 
 much more upon their form, than upon their absolute height. This point 
 is the one to which fleecy clouds (not thin watery vapours) are accuse 
 tomed to descend." — Wordsworth, Life, ii. 157. 
 
 X See above, p. 119. 
 
278 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 bridge, some miles from Horton ; and the poet's musical 
 friend, Henry Lawes, was in the service, as it was termed, 
 of her and her family. On Shrove-Tuesday night, in 
 1633-34, the splendid mask of Coelum Britannicum, the 
 machinery by Inigo Jones, the poetry by Thomas Carew, 
 and the music by Henry Lawes, was presented in the 
 Banqueting-House, at Whitehall, the King himself being 
 one of the maskers. Among the " young lords and no- 
 blemen's sons " attending on them, were Lord Brackley 
 and Mr. Thomas Egerton, the grandsons of the Countess 
 of Derby. These boys, and some of their relations, or 
 more probably Lawes himself, may then have conceived 
 the idea of giving an entertainment of a similar kind to 
 the venerable Countess herself; and for the requisite dra- 
 matic narrative and lyric poetry, Lawes had recourse to 
 his gifted friend at Horton.* We have already shown 
 the utter absurdity of the supposition of Milton's being 
 a visitor at Harefield. 
 
 ^ The poetry is splendid, perhaps too good for the oc- 
 casion, and probably there were few present who fully 
 comprehended the poet's sublime language respecting 
 the music of the spheres ; but as Lawes probably recited 
 with taste and expression, the effect must have been 
 highly agreeable. We do not see the necessity of as- 
 suming, with Warton, that "unquestionably this Mask 
 was a much longer performance," or that, as he says, 
 
 * That Arcades and Comus were written for Lawes, and not for the 
 Countess of Derby or the Egertons, appears from Lawes' Dedication of 
 Comus, in which he says, " the often copying of it hath tired, my pen to 
 give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity of 
 producing it to the public view," etc. He surely would not express 
 himself in such terms if he did not regard it as his property. Professor 
 E. Taylor, in an Essay presently to be quoted, expresses the very same 
 opinion as that which we have given. 
 
coMus. 279 
 
 there was also prose and machinery. As the entertain- 
 ment was given to the Countess at her own house, the 
 machinery would have most probably been at her own 
 expense, while the terms " presented . . by some noble 
 persons of her family," would lead us to suppose that it 
 was entirely gratuitous. The whole seems complete as 
 it is. The maskers enter singing, the Genius of the 
 Wood appears and addresses them; he then, with a song, 
 leads them up to where the Countess was sitting ; they 
 dance before her, and the Genius then perhaps concludes 
 with the other song. It appears to us that the enter- 
 tainment, like Ben Jonson's Satyr, was presented in the 
 open air, in Harefield Park, and that therefore it took 
 place in the summer-time. The place where the Coun- 
 tess was stationed was probably hung round with lamps, 
 which will explain the various allusions made in the 
 songs to the radiance with which she was invested. 
 
 COMIJS. 
 
 The success of the Arcades probably inspired Lawes 
 and the Egerton family with ideas of a bolder cast. The 
 Earl of Bridgewater, head of that family, and son-in-law 
 of the Countess of Derby, had been appointed, in 1631, 
 Lord President of Wales and the Marches; but, from some 
 cause or other he did not take up his official residence 
 at Ludlow castle, in Salop, till the autumn of 1634, — the 
 year, as we have seen, in which the Arcades was pre- 
 sented. Warton tells us (from a MS., he says, of 01- 
 dys'), that " on this occasion he was attended by a large 
 concourse of the neighbouring nobility and gentry. 
 Among the rest came his children, in particular. Lord 
 Brackley, Mr. Thomas Egerton, and Lady Alice. They 
 had been on a visit at a house of their relations, the 
 
280 WRITINGS or MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Egerton family, in Herefordshire ; and in passing through 
 Haywood forest were benighted, and the Lady AHce was 
 even lost for a short time. This accident, which in the 
 end was attended with no bad consequences, furnished 
 the subject of a Mask for a Michaelmas festivity, and 
 produced Comus. Lord Bridgewater was appointed 
 Lord President, May 12, 1633. When the perilous ad- 
 venture in Haywood forest happened, if true, cannot 
 now be told ; it must have been soon after. The Mask 
 was acted at Michaelmas, 1634." We must confess, 
 that we certainly feel inclined to regard this tale of the 
 Children in the Wood, as somewhat apocryphal, and as 
 being founded on Comus. At all events, it must have oc- 
 curred, not in 1633, but a short time before the represen- 
 tation of the Mask, in the prologue to which it is said — 
 
 .... His fair offspring, nursed in princely lore, 
 Are coming to attend their father's state 
 And new-entrusted sceptre. 
 
 This would seem to prove that it was their first visit 
 to Ludlow, and it is most probable that the Mask had 
 been prepared and learned by the young actors at Hare- 
 field, and was presented by them on their arrival at 
 Ludlow castle. 
 
 The origin of Comus would appear to have been as 
 follows : — There was a " pleasant conceited comedy," by 
 the unfortunate George Peele, named The Old Wives 
 Tale, which Lawes probably had read ; and it may have 
 struck him that some of the incidents in it might be 
 employed in the construction of the Mask, to be written 
 by Milton, at his request, and to be presented by himself 
 and his young pupils at Ludlow. All perhaps that he 
 proposed was, that, as the lady and her brothers were 
 passing through a wood, on their w^ay, she should be 
 
coMus. 281 
 
 lost, and fall into the power of an enchanter, from which 
 she should be delivered by her brothers, and it may be 
 by himself in the character of an attendant spirit. Tor 
 all the rest, he trusted to the genius of his poetic friend, 
 and well he might trust to it; for the noble poem 
 that thence arose must have amazed himself and every 
 one that heard or read it. As Hallam most justly ob- 
 serves, it "was sufficient to convince any one of taste 
 and feeling, that a great poet had arisen in England, and 
 one partly formed in a different school from his contem- 
 poraries." 
 
 If we allow ourselves to be guided by Warton and 
 Todd, we shall detract considerably from Milton's powers 
 of invention, for we shall find nearly all the incidents 
 of Comus in the Old Wives Tale. But, on reading the 
 Play itself, we shall be surprised to see how trifling and 
 how unconnected these incidents are which he is accused 
 of adopting. In fact, we almost doubt if Milton had 
 read the Play at all, or knew any more of its contents 
 than what Lawes told him, who may not even have men- 
 tioned it. 
 
 "This very scarce and curious piece," says Warton, 
 " exhibits, among other parallel incidents, two Brothers 
 wandering in quest of their Sister, whom an Enchanter had 
 imprisoned. This magician had learned his art from his 
 mother Meroe, as Comus had been instructed by his mo- 
 ther Circe. The Brothers call out on the ladv's name, and 
 Echo replies. The Enchanter had given her a potion, 
 which suspends the powers of reason and superinduces 
 oblivion of herself. The Brothers afterwards meet with 
 an Old Man, who is also skilled in magic, and by listen- 
 ing to his soothsaying, they recover their lost Sister. But 
 not till the Enchanter's wreath had been torn from his 
 
282 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 head, his sword wrested from his hand, a glass broken, 
 and a Hght extinguished." Warton, in addition, notices 
 that in the Old Wives Tale, three adventurers are lost 
 in a wood, where they sing a song, hear a dog, and 
 fancy themselves to be near some village. They meet a 
 peasant with a lantern, who invites them to his cottage. 
 His old wife then tells a tale, to pass the time. The per- 
 sonages of the tale appear, of whom the first are two 
 brothers, who are just landed in Albion in search of the 
 Princess their sister, whom an Enchanter in the shape 
 of a dragon had stolen away. A soothsayer enters, with 
 whom they converse about her, and in their search 
 Echo replies to their call. " They find, too late, that their 
 Sister is under the captivity of a wicked magician, and 
 that she has tasted his cup of oblivion. In the close, 
 after the wreath is torn from the Magician's head, and 
 he is disarmed and killed by a Spirit, in the shape and 
 character of a beautiful page of fifteen years old, she 
 still remains subject to the Magician's enchantment. But 
 in a subsequent scene, the Spirit enters, and declares 
 that the Sister cannot be delivered but by a lady, who 
 is neither maid, wife, nor widow. The Spirit blows a 
 magical horn, and the Lady appears ; she dissolves the 
 charm, by breaking a glass and extinguishing a light, as 
 I have before recited. A curtain is withdrawn, and the 
 Sister is seen seated and asleep. She is disenchanted, 
 and restored to her senses, having been spoken to thrice. 
 She then rejoins her two Brothers, with whom she re- 
 turns home ; and the Boy-spirit vanishes under the earth. 
 The magician is here called, 'enchanter vile,' as in 
 Comus, V. 907." These resemblances, when thus stated, 
 appear no doubt very close, but still we say. Read the 
 Old Wives Tale, and you will see how really faint they 
 
coMus. 283 
 
 are. As to that Play having been " the favourite of Mil- 
 ton's early youth," as Warton hints, we utterly repudiate 
 the supposition. 
 
 We are willing to concede to Todd, and the critics 
 whom he quotes, that Milton may have been in some 
 slight degree indebted to the Comus of Erycius Putea- 
 nus, which was first published at Louvain in 1608, and 
 was reprinted at Oxford in 1634, the very year in which 
 the Mask was written. He would seem to have derived 
 from it the name and character of Comus, the mode of 
 his first appearance, and some of the ideas and senti- 
 ments ascribed to him. We certainly think it extremely 
 likely that Milton had purchased and read a book which 
 had been thought deserving of being issued from the 
 press in Oxford at that very time. 
 
 It is also said that Milton was under obligation to the 
 Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher for some of the senti- 
 ments and imagery of Comus. No doubt he had read 
 that beautiful drama, and Warton has pointed out some 
 places in it which very much resemble some of those 
 toward the end of Milton's Mask, of which they were 
 probably the original. We may also see, in various 
 other passages, that that drama was in the mind of the 
 poet. There had been three editions of it anterior to 
 the composition of Comus, and it had been acted at 
 Court on Twelfth Night, 1633-34, and several times 
 afterwards in that year at one of the theatres. 
 
 That Comus is an exquisitely beautiful poem, is what X 
 no one ever has had the hardihood to deny. Even John- 
 son confesses that " a work more truly poetical is rarely 
 found ; " yet he cannot avoid finding, or rather fancying, 
 blemishes. He says it is deficient as a drama, and the 
 action is not probable ; the simple answer to which is. 
 
284 WRITINGS OF MILTON — VERSE. 
 
 that it is a mask, and not a drama ; that the conduct of 
 the brothers in leaving their sister is not reasonable; but 
 surely the poet gives a very simple reason for it : that 
 the prologue spoken in the wild woods is addressed to 
 the audience ; and to whom are the prologues in Euri- 
 pides addressed, no matter where the scene may be? 
 He says both it and all the speeches are too long ; but 
 they are not more so than those in the Grecian drama 
 and the Italian pastorals. He allows that the song of 
 Comus is good, but the following soliloquy is tedious, 
 though elegant. The song of the lady, he says, " must 
 owe much to the voice if ever it can delight!" and all 
 that follows is tedious and unentertaining. To this we 
 can only reply, that tastes do differ wonderfully. The 
 dispute between Comus and the lady, he thinks the best 
 part of the piece, but the dialogue is not quick enough. 
 " The songs are vigorous and full of imagery, but they 
 are harsh in their diction, and not very musical in 
 their numbers." This surely is the blind man judging 
 of colours. He concludes by saying, " Throughout the 
 whole the figures are too bold, and the language too 
 luxuriant for dialogue. It is a drama in the epic style, 
 inelegantly splendid and tediously instructive." Again 
 we reply, it is a mask, not a drama. 
 ^- . We may finally observe, that were Comus to be re- 
 ^ ;/ presented at the present day in the same manner as it 
 ^/'^^ / was at Ludlow Castle, we should probably observe a 
 y^ want of harmony between the actors and the language 
 which was not noticed at that time. Lady Alice was 
 not more than thirteen years of age, and Lord Brackley 
 only twelve, and their brother of course still younger ; 
 and it seems difficult to conceive how children like these 
 could fully comprehend the lofty language which they 
 
coMus. 285 
 
 had to deliver. Besides, the appearance of the two boys 
 with Lawes, a full-grown man, must have been some- 
 what incongruous. We are not told who presented 
 Comus, but he also was of course a man. We are, 
 however, to recollect that various plays, among the rest 
 the learned serious dramas of Ben Jonson, were repre- 
 sented by the children (/, e. choir boys) of St. Paul's, the 
 Chapel Royal, and other places. 
 
 There is a difficulty, unnoticed by critics, in the fol- 
 lowing place of this poem : — 
 
 The leaf was darkish and had prickles on it, 
 But in another country, as he said. 
 Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil ; 
 Unknown and like esteemed, and the dull swain 
 Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon. — v. 631.* 
 
 It would seem from this that it was the leaf, not the 
 plant, that bore the flower, which could hardly have 
 been the poet s meaning. But, then, should have been 
 and, and bore, it bore. In like manner unknown is 
 rather unconnected and obscure ; the probable mean- 
 ing is, unknown as to its virtues, and therefore treated 
 as a mere weed. This is one of the most neghgently 
 constructed passages in the whole of Milton's poetry; but 
 as we shall show, he was at this period not over-studious 
 of grammatic accuracy. 
 
 * The notes of the critics on this passage are worth reading, as speci- 
 mens of learned trifling and ignorance of the principles of English 
 verse. They actually scan v. 633, 
 
 Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil, 
 in order to avoid a hypercatalectic verse. Of course they also read, — 
 
 Think what and be advised ; you are but young yet. — 755. 
 When such was their mode of reading, no wonder that Warton should 
 say, " Milton, notwithstanding his singular skill in music, appears to 
 have had a very bad ear ; and it is hard to say on what principle he 
 modulated his lines." He modulated them here at least on the very 
 same principle as the dramatists, in whom such lines as the above are 
 numerous. • 
 
 C^^ 
 
286 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 " I shall appear some harmless villager, 
 Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear. 
 But here she comes, I fairly step aside 
 And hearken, if I may, her business here. 
 
 MS., and ed. o/1637 ^ '45. 
 
 This is printed in the edition of 1673, — 
 
 I shall appear some harmless villager, 
 And hearken, if I may, her business here. 
 But here she comes, I fairly step aside 
 
 In the errata we are directed, apparently by the poet 
 himself,* to " leave out the comma after may, and for 
 here to read hear'' and this is certainly an improvement ; 
 for if we retain the other reading, we must suppose 
 hearken to signify hear, a sense it never bears to our 
 knowledge. In like manner in 
 That there eternal summer dwells {v. 988, MB.y ed. 1637, '45), 
 
 we are directed to omit that. The editors, following we 
 know not what rule, adopt the latter and reject the for- 
 mer correction. We have adopted both. 
 
 The two following pieces were prefixed to Comus in 
 the edition of 1645, but omitted in that of 1673, of 
 course by directions from the poet himself. 
 
 To the Might Sonoralle John Lord Viscount Brady, son and heir 
 apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater, Sfc^ 
 Mt Loed, 
 This poem, which received its first occasion of birth from your- 
 
 * He directs that the verses At a Solemn Music should come after 
 the Elegie, as he terms the hues On the Death of a Fair Infant. As he 
 took no notice of the omission of one line and the transposition of two 
 others — an evident printer's blunder — in this place of Comus, it is plain 
 that the corrections were made from memory only. 
 
 t The following motto was prefixed to the edition of 1637, whether 
 by Milton himself or by Lawes is uncertain, but probably by the latter : — 
 " Eheu ! quid volui misero mihi ? floribus austrum 
 Perditus." 
 
coMus. 287 
 
 self and others of your noble family, and much honour from your 
 own person in the performance, now returns again to make a finall 
 dedication of itself to you. Although not openly acknowledged 
 by the author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely, and so 
 much desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to 
 give my severall friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity 
 of producing it to the publike view ; and now to offer it up in all 
 rightfull devotion to those fair hopes and rare endowments of 
 your much promising youth, which give a full assurance, to all 
 that know you, of a* future excellence. Live, sweet Lord, to be 
 the honour of your name, and receive this as your own, from the 
 hands of him who hath by many favours been long obliged to your 
 most honoured parents, and as in this representation your atten- 
 dant Thyrsis, so now in all reall expression 
 
 Tour faithfull and most humble servant, 
 
 H. La WES. 
 
 The Copy of a Letter written hy Sir Senry Wboton to the Author, 
 upon the following Poem. 
 
 From the Colledge, this ISth of April, 1638. 
 SlE,. 
 
 It was a special favour when you lately bestowed upon me here 
 the first taste of your acquaintance, though no longer then to 
 make me know that I wanted more time to value it, and to enjoy 
 it rightly ; and in truth, if I could then have imagined your 
 farther stay in these parts, which I understood afterwards by 
 Mr. H.,* I would have been bold, in our vulgar phrase, to mend 
 my draught (for you left me with an extreme thirst), and to have 
 begged your conversation again, joyntly with your said learned 
 friend, at a poor meal or two, that we might have banded to- 
 gether som good authors of the ancient time : among which, I 
 observed you to have been familiar. 
 
 Since your going you have charged me with new obligations, 
 both for a very kinde letter from you, dated the sixth of this 
 month, and for a dainty peece of entertainment which came there- 
 with. Wherein I should much commend the Tragical part, if the 
 
 * Probably John Hales of Eton. 
 
288 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your 
 songs and odes ; wherunto I must plainly confess to have seen 
 nothing parallel in our language : Ipsa mollities. But I must not 
 omit to tell you, that I now onely owe you thanks for intimating 
 unto me (how modestly soever) the true artificer. For the work 
 itself I had viewed som good while before with singular delight, 
 having received it from our common friend Mr. E.* in the very 
 close of the late E.'s poems, printed at Oxford, whereunto it is 
 added (as I now suppose), that the accessory might help out the 
 principal according to the art of stationers, and to leave the reader 
 con la hocca dolce. 
 
 Now, Sir, concerning your travels, wherein I may chalenge a 
 little more priviledge of discours with you ; I suppose you will 
 not blanch Paris in your way ; therefore I have been bold to trou- 
 ble you with a few lines to Mr. M. B.f whom you shall easily find 
 attending the young Lord S.:j: as his governor ; and you may surely 
 receive from him good directions for the shaping of your further 
 journey into Italy, where he did reside by my choice som time for 
 the king, after my own recess from Venice. 
 
 I should think that your best line would be to thorow the whole 
 length of France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa, 
 whence the passage into Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend 
 barge : I hasten, as you do to Florence, or Siena, the rather to 
 tell you a short story from the interest you have given me in your 
 safety. 
 
 At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni, an 
 old Roman courtier in dangerous times, having bin steward to the 
 Duca di Pagliano, who with all his family were strangled, save 
 this onely man that escaped by foresight of the tempest : with 
 him I had often much chat of those affairs j into which he took 
 pleasure to look back from his native harbour ; and at my depar- 
 ture toward E,ome (which had been the center of his experience) 
 I had worm confidence enough to beg his advice, how I might 
 carry myself securely there, without offence of others, or of mine 
 own conscience. " Signer Arrigo mio," sayes he, " i pensieri stretti, 
 
 * The first R. ( Warton says) is probably Rouse, the Bodley librarian ; 
 the second, Thomas Randolph, author of The Muses' Looking-glass, &c. 
 
 t Probably, as Warton says, Michael Branthwaite, formerly agent 
 at Venice. 
 
 J S. is Scudamore. 
 
LYCIDAS. 289 
 
 ed il viso sciolto," will go safely over the whole world ; of which 
 Delphian oracle (for so I have found it) your judgement doth 
 need no commentary; and therefore (Sir) I will commit you with 
 it to the best of all securities, Grod's dear love, remaining 
 Your friend, as much at command 
 
 As any of longer date, 
 
 Henbt "Wooton. 
 
 (^Postscript.) 
 
 SlE, 
 
 I have expressly sent this my footboy to prevent your departure 
 without som acknowledgement from me of the receipt of your obli- 
 ging Letter, having myself through som busines, I know not how, 
 neglected the ordinary conveyance. In any part where I shall 
 understand you fixed, I shall be glad, and diligent, to entertain 
 you with home novelties ; even for some fomentation of our friend- 
 ship, too soon interrupted in the cradle. 
 
 LYCIDAS. 
 
 One of Milton's most intimate friends at Cambridge 
 had been Mr. Edward King, son of Sir John King, Se- 
 cretary for Ireland under the reign of three successive 
 monarchs. They belonged to the same college, Christ- 
 church, and appear to have been engaged at the same 
 time in the study of divinity. In the beginning of Au- 
 gust, 1637, King embarked at Chester, in a very crazy 
 vessel, in order to pass over to Ireland to visit his family 
 and friends ; but while the ship was still close to the 
 Enghsh coast, it struck on a sunken rock, and all on 
 board, it is said, perished. The fate of King, who was 
 only twenty-five years old, excited great grief among his 
 literary friends, which was exhibited in a manner usual at 
 the time, by verses in his honour ; and in the following 
 year there was published at Cambridge, a thin quarto 
 volume, containing three Greek, nineteen Latin, and thir- 
 teen English poems, in honour of the deceased ; an ac- 
 
 u 
 
290 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 count of his life, etc. was prefixed, probably from the 
 pen of H. More, the Platonist, who wrote one of the 
 Greek poems. Among the English poems is Milton's 
 Lycidas. It stands last in the volume, for which inge- 
 nious reasons have been assigned, while it may be that, 
 as it had to be transmitted from Horton, it did not arrive 
 till after the other poems had been printed. According 
 to the Trinity MS. it was written in November, 1637. 
 
 In his depreciation of this beautiful poem, Johnson 
 actually runs riot ; he will not allow it merit of any kind. 
 We will transcribe the whole tirade^ as a proof of his 
 want, either of true poetic feeling, or of critical justice 
 and equity. 
 
 " The diction is harsh, the rimes uncertain, the num- 
 bers unpleasing. ... It is not to be considered as the 
 effusion of real passion, for passion runs not after remote 
 allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no ber- 
 ries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethusa 
 and Mincius, nor tells of ' rough satyrs,' and ' fawns with 
 cloven heels.' Where there is leisure for fiction, there is 
 little grief. In this poem there is no nature, for there is 
 no truth ; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its 
 form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore 
 disgusting ; whatever images it can supply are long ago 
 exhausted, and its inherent improbability always forces 
 dissatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Her- 
 vey, that they studied together, it is easy to suppose how 
 much he must miss the companion of his labours and 
 the partner of his discoveries ; but what image of tender- 
 ness can be excited by these lines — We drove afield, etc.? 
 We know that they never drove afield, and that they 
 had no flocks to batten ; and though it be allowed that 
 the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning 
 
LYCIDAS. 291 
 
 is so uncertain and remote, that it is never sought, be- 
 cause it cannot be known when it is found. Among the 
 flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen dei- 
 ties, Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and ^olus, with a long 
 train of mythological imagery, such as a college easily 
 supplies. Nothing can less display knowledge, or less 
 exercise invention, than to tell how a shepherd has lost 
 his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, with- 
 out a judge of his skill in piping, and how one god asks 
 another god. What is become of Lycidas ? and how nei- 
 ther god can tell. He who thus grieves will excite no 
 sympathy ; he who thus praises will confer no honour. 
 The poem has yet a grosser fault ; with these trifling 
 fictions are mingled the most awful and sacred truths, 
 such as ought never to be polluted vsdth such irreverent 
 combinations. The shepherd likewise is now a feeder of 
 sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a superin- 
 tendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are al- 
 ways unskilful ; but here they are indecent, and at least 
 approach to impiety, of which however I believe the au- 
 thor to have been unconscious." He adds, " Surely no 
 man could have fancied he read Lycidas with pleasure, 
 had he not known the author." 
 
 We surely shall not be accused of presumption, if we * ^i^^ 
 say, that it would be a mere waste of time to enter into ^,;J' 
 a formal refutation of such criticism as this. Johnson, 
 it is evident, was determined to make, if he could not 
 find, faults ; and with such critics reasoning is useless. It 
 is not however every class of mind that can appreciate or 
 enjoy such highly imaginative poetry as that of Lycidas, 
 and there are very many, in fact perhaps a large ma- 
 jority of readers, who will derive little pleasure from it, 
 while they have a high rehsh for the poetry of Dryden 
 
 u 2 
 
292 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 and Pope. Lycidas is, as it has been said, " a good test 
 of a real feeling for what is peculiarly called poetry," 
 and we know that that feeling is not by any means com- 
 ,mon. 
 
 It was an early but erroneous opinion that the bu- 
 colic poetry of Virgil was allegoric ;* that, for example, 
 in the fifth eclogue, under the name of Daphnis, the Si- 
 cilian shepherd, was concealed the person of Caesar, the 
 Dictator, whose praises and whose apotheosis were there 
 sung. In the Middle Ages this opinion was universal, 
 and under the pastoral form, Dante, Petrarca and Boc- 
 caccio, shot their sharpest arrows against Guelfism and 
 the Papacy. In like manner the Shepherd's Calendar of 
 Spenser is allegoric, and some of the ^glogues are — of 
 course to the horror of High-church bigots, like Johnson, 
 — devoted to the exposure of ecclesiastic abuses. We find 
 pastoral poetry employed in this allegoric manner, down 
 to the eighteenth century, a proof perhaps that it was not 
 repugnant to the general taste ; and these, we must re- 
 collect, were times of far more poetic feeling than those 
 of Johnson, or than the present utilitarian age. This 
 species of allegory seems to have pleased the imagination 
 of Milton, for he employed it again in his Epitaphium 
 Damonis, in which he lamented the death of his friend 
 Diodati. Both poems are addressed to the imagina- 
 tion, rather than to the feelings ; for time sufficient had 
 elapsed in both cases to let these subside ; and it is not 
 to be supposed that a spirit elevated and chastened by 
 religion, such as Milton's, would indulge in the expres- 
 sion of vulgar and earthly sorrow. With the eye of faith, 
 he sees his friends removed to scenes of greater joy and 
 
 * On this subject we may venture, we think, to refer the reader for 
 full information to our edition of the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil. 
 
LYCIDAS. 293 
 
 bliss ; and, his mind therefore being at peace, the only fa- 
 culty he could employ was the imagination. We may ask 
 "any reader of true taste and poetic feeling, if he thinks 
 it likely that he should receive as much pleasure as he 
 does at present from Lycidas, if the poet had divested it 
 of pastoral ideas, banished all allegoric forms, abstained 
 with religious awe from introducing the "Pilot of the 
 Galilaean lake," and written it after such a manner as 
 would have obtained the approbation of Johnson. We 
 trow not. 
 
 As to the versification of Lycidas, it was of course 
 disagreeable to the ear of Johnson, which could reUsh 
 nothing but tame regularity, ' the right butter- woman's 
 rank to market," as Touchstone terms it. The verse is of 
 Milton's own formation, in this, as in most of his other 
 poems. From Tasso and Guarini he adopted the prac- 
 tice of minghng three-foot lines with the regular verses 
 of five feet, and of adding occasionally the ornament of 
 rime. In this he did not follow any rule but that of his 
 own ear, and they therefore can only be perfectly enjoyed 
 by those few whose ear, like his own, is fully attuned to 
 the variety of poetic melody. It has not, we ^believe, 
 been observed by any critic,^ that the last eight lines of 
 Lycidas form a perfect stanza in ottava rima. As they 
 stand detached, such was probably the poet's design; 
 but we meet with eight other lines (124-131), which, 
 though they terminate a paragraph, are united with what 
 precedes more closely than is ever the case in the Italian 
 poets. Whether this was accidental or not, we are un- 
 able to determine. He had, it is true, the authority of 
 Fairfax f for such a structure ; but we incline to think 
 
 * Mason however was aware of it, as lie imitated it in his Musseus. 
 t See Godfrey of Bullogne, xix. 3, 4. 
 
294 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 it casual, as in another place {vv. 165-172), by merely 
 transposing two lines we should have a perfect stanza, 
 and in a third {vv. 111-118), by altering a single rime. 
 The following passage in this poem long perplexed the 
 critics : — 
 
 Or whether thou, to our moist vow^ denied, 
 Sleepest by the fable of Bellerus old, 
 Where the great Vision of the guarded Mount 
 Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold. 
 
 At length Warton threw light on this, as on many other 
 obscure places. He showed that the place called by the 
 poet " the fable of Bellerus old" was St. Michael's Mount, 
 at the Land's-end, in Cornwall, anciently named Belle- 
 rium, from which the poet formed the name Bellerus, 
 as that of one of the fabulous old giants who, according 
 to Geoffrey of Monmouth, possessed Britain in times of 
 old. He fiu-ther adds, that, beside his celebrated appari- 
 tion on Mount Gargano, in Italy, the archangel Michael 
 had appeared on various other eminences, among others 
 on this in Cornwall, thence named from him. Warton 
 describes St. Michael's Mount as a steep rock in Mount's 
 Bay, accessible from the land at low- water. On its sum- 
 mit stood a monastery, founded before the time of Ed- 
 ward the Confessor, with which was connected a fortress. 
 A stone lantern in one of the angles of the tower of the 
 church is called St. Michael's chair ; but this is not the 
 original chair of which Carew, in his SmTey of Corn- 
 wall, says, " a little without the castle there is a bad seat 
 in a craggy place, called St. Michael's chair." Warton 
 further quotes William of Worcester (a.d. 1490), who, 
 in speaking of this place, says there was an '' apparitio 
 Sancti Michaelis in Monte Tumba antea vocato Le Hore 
 
LYCIDAS. 295 
 
 Rock in the Wode;"* which Hoar Rock, he says, is the 
 Mount, which, according to Drayton and Carew, was an- 
 ciently covered with thick wood. There is still, he adds, 
 a tradition that a vision of St. Michael, seated on this 
 crag, appeared to some hermits, which gave occasion to 
 the building of the monastery. The " great vision" then, 
 he concludes justly, is St. Michael, termed Angel z;. 163 ; 
 and the Mount, he says, is styled (juarded on account of 
 the fortress. We however rather think that in the poet's 
 view, St. Michael himself, whom he represents looking 
 out over the sea, kept watch and ward on the Mount. 
 
 So far was Warton able to advance, but " Namancos and 
 Bayona's hold " remained inaccessible to him. At length, 
 in 1800, a writer in the Monthly Magazine conjectured 
 that Namancos must have been intended for the ancient 
 Numantia, near Tarragona, on the coast of Catalonia, f 
 and that Milton had given a Spanish termination to the 
 word. ** I am aware," he adds, " that this place is on 
 the opposite side to Bayona; but let it be remembered 
 that they are no common eyes that look upon the scene ; 
 they are no less than those of an archangel." Dunster 
 adopts this opinion, only adding that it was the French 
 Bayonne, and not the Spanish Bayona that was meant, as 
 " Milton scarcely meant to make his archangel look two 
 ways at once," Todd thought that Milton had adopted 
 the orthography Namancos from some romance. 
 
 Finally, a literary friend of Mr. Todd's happening to 
 be tm-ning over Mercator's Atlas, met the very word 
 
 * This, and Spenser's lines— 
 
 St. Michel's Mount who does not know, 
 That wards the western coast P — Shep. Col. vii. 41. 
 were probably Milton's sole authority ; his imagination did the rest. 
 
 t He must mean Saguntum {Murviedro), for Numantia was in Old 
 Castile. 
 
296 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Namancos. In the map of Gallicia in that Atlas, and in 
 the peninsula of Cape rinisterre, we find, about the site 
 of the present Mujio, "Namancos T.," i.e. Tunis. Bayona 
 lies south of this, a little to the north of the Minho, and 
 it was used, Mercator says, by the English merchants 
 as a staple for their woollen cloths, whence probably 
 its name was more familiar in Milton's time than it is 
 now, and better known than perhaps any other name in 
 the part of GaUicia opposite the Land's-end, except The 
 Groine {Corund), which was not a very poetic term. As 
 Mercator's Atlas was a common book, he may have sup- 
 posed the name Namancos to be generally known to per- 
 sons of education.* 
 
 To prove to demonstration how utterly negligent of 
 punctuation Milton was, we here give a passage of Lyci- 
 das exactly as it stands in the editions of 1645 and 1673, 
 premising that it was far more correctly punctuated in 
 the original edition of 1638 : — 
 
 Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies. 
 
 The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine, 
 
 The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat, 
 
 The glowing Violet. 
 
 The Musk-rose, and the well-attir'd Woodbine, 
 
 With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed. 
 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
 
 Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
 
 And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 
 
 To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies. 
 
 For so to interpose a little ease. 
 
 Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. 
 
 Ay me ! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
 
 Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld. 
 
 Whether beyond, etc. 
 
 * Mr. Hunter (Milton, page 51) maintains that it was not Bayona, 
 but a place near Cape Pinisterre, of which is said, in a book of Pilotage, 
 printed at Amsterdam, in 1662 : " About a league to the eastward of 
 
LYCIDAS. 297 
 
 Here, it will be seen, there are periods instead of commas 
 at dies, violet, and surmise ; at the last there is a semi- 
 colon in the edition of 1638,* but it should not be greater 
 than a comma, as surmise connects with whilst, Ay me ! 
 being parenthetic. 
 
 By wash far away must be meant " lave at a great dis- 
 tance ;" but the expression is ambiguous, for the proper 
 meaning of wash away is, to remove by the action of 
 water. It has sometimes • occurred to us that the poet, 
 who, as we have seen, was careless about punctuation, 
 mi^ht have intended that there should be a full stop at 
 away, and an address to Lycidas commence at where'er, to 
 be interrupted by an aposiopesis at Bayonds hold, but 
 that, as sometimes happens, he acquiesced in the punctu- 
 ation given by the printer. If we do not deceive our- 
 selves, the punctuation at which we have hinted would 
 increase the force and vividness of the passage, which is 
 in itself so very picturesque. 
 
 We cannot refrain from making a digression here on 
 the state of our typography in former times. We have 
 seen that Milton was utterly careless about pimctuation, 
 and that even a most important word could be omitted in 
 one of his poems, without himself or his friend who read 
 the proof-sheets becoming aware of it ; and yet w^e are 
 called upon to receive as almost immaculate the first folio 
 
 Cape de Finisterre, on the south side, lieth the haven of Seche or Cor- 
 covia, and is called by the Dutch shipmasters Corcke Bayone." But 
 no such place occurs on Mercator's map, which was evidently Milton's 
 authority. 
 
 * The edition of 1638 reads the last four lines as follows : — 
 For so to interpose a little ease, 
 Let our frail thoughts daUy with false surmise ; 
 Ah me, whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 
 Wash far away, where'er thy bones ai-e hurled, etc. 
 
298 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE, 
 
 of Shakespeare's plays, printed after the death of the 
 author, and edited by men who probably had never be- 
 fore in their lives corrected proof-sheets !* In fact, it is 
 almost wonderful, all things considered, that we should 
 have these divine dramas in so perfect a state as they are, 
 and infinite is our obUgation to Hemming and Condell ; 
 but still we must acknowledge that, as compared with 
 the works of Spenser, Ben Jonson, and some others, they 
 contain numerous errors, caused most probably by the 
 ill-written manuscript that was placed in the printer's 
 hands,t and the absence of the author's own supervision, 
 
 A compositor in a printing-office is to be regarded as 
 a copyist. Speaking then from our own experience, in 
 copying passages for this work, we would say that the 
 errors he would be likely to commit, and which nothing 
 but the eye of the author might be able to detect, — and 
 that not always — are omission, addition, transposition, 
 substitution. Of each of these we will give a few, out 
 of many, examples from Shakespeare ; not however with 
 the remotest expectation of seeing any of our suggestions 
 adopted. 
 
 We may notwithstanding venture to observe that, in 
 our opinion, it would be more judicious in editors to 
 insert in italics, or between brackets, the single words 
 which have been suggested, with some probability of cor- 
 rectness, to supply omissions, rather than give hues so 
 
 * From tlie preface to Ferrall and Repp's Danisli Dictionary, we learn 
 tliat there are no Readers in the Royal Printing-office at Copenhagen. 
 It was probably the same in London in the seventeenth century. In 
 that case, the proof-sheets as sent to the author, from a respectable office, 
 would be a favourable representation of the printed sheets of the foHo 
 of 1623. 
 
 t Compositors have to work against time : it is therefore little less 
 than positive dishonesty to send illegible manuscript to the printer's. 
 
LYCIDAS, 299 
 
 inharmonious, that it is quite impossible the poet could 
 have left them in that state. We would say the same 
 with respect to transpositions ; while additions and sub- 
 stitutions might be indicated in notes. 
 
 Omissions are sometimes of entire lines, or parts of 
 lines, or of single words.* We will only give instances 
 of the last. 
 
 Norway himself with terrible numbers there^ 
 Assisted by that most disloyal traitor, 
 The thane of Cawdor. — Mach. i. 2. 
 Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, 
 And falls on the other side, — How now ! What news ? 
 
 Ih. i. 7.t 
 Now o'er the one half world 
 Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 
 The curtained sleep ; now witchcraft celebrates % 
 Pale Hecate's offerings. — lb. ii. 1. 
 
 Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself . . , 
 Within my sword's length set him. — If he scape 
 Then Heaven forgive him too. — This tune goes manly. 
 
 lb. iv. 3. 
 Let me then tell you, Cassius, you yourself 
 Are much condemned to have an itchiug palm. 
 
 Jul. C(BS. iv. 3. 
 This but done, 
 Even as she speaks, why, all their hearts were yours. 
 
 Coriol. iii. 2. 
 
 * The last, as in the following example, frequently takes place at 
 the end of lines. Pope supplied an entire line in Coriolanus, and Mr. 
 Collier's corrector several, some not unhappily. 
 
 t There is no interruption : Macbeth pauses and muses for a moment 
 before his lady enters. 
 
 X Mr. Collier thinks the imperfect line more expressive ! " We have 
 no right," he says, " to attempt to improve Sliakespeare's versification ; 
 if he thought fit to leave the line here with nine syllables, as he has 
 done in other instances, some people may consider him wrong, but no- 
 body ought to venture to correct him." But we say it was the priater, 
 or copyist, not Shakespeare, that made the lines imperfect. 
 
300 WRITINGS OF MILTON^ — VERSE. 
 
 But that the dread of something after death, 
 J' the undiscovered country, from whose bourne 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the will. — Sam. iii. 1.* 
 
 Eightly to be great 
 Is not, not to stir without great argument, 
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 
 When honour's at the stake. — Ih. iv. 4. 
 
 He must observe their mood on whom he jests. 
 The quality of persons, and the time, 
 And not, like the haggard, check at every feather 
 That comes before his eye. — Twelfth Night, iii. l.f 
 
 The following seem to be additions : — 
 
 I '11 go to him, and undertake to bring him in peace. 
 
 Goriol. iii. 1. 
 So they doubly redoubled blows upon the foe. — Macb. i. 2. 
 
 A medicine tJiat '« able to breathe life into a stone. 
 
 AlVs Well, ii. 1. 
 
 Transpositions will restore the verse in the following 
 instances : — 
 
 Well-fitted in arts, glorious in arms. — Love's Lab. Lost, ii. 1. 
 In arts well-fitted, glorious in arms. 
 
 * By the omission, as we may say, of a single letter here, a country 
 is made a thing, or rather an event. Can any one produce a parallel P 
 We cannot. We are required to believe the printers and editors of the 
 folio Shakespeare to have been nearly impeccable, while in the accurately 
 printed first edition of Paradise Lost we find the very word in question 
 omitted : — 
 
 Is heard no more [w] heaven, he of the first. — ^v. 656 j 
 
 and in a single page (180) of the third edition we meet heavn for heav'd, 
 and — 
 
 Satiate with [geniaV] moisture, when God said. — vii. 202. 
 
 Wave roUing after wave, where \wai/] they found. — lb. 298. 
 
 t We wonder how this could have escaped any critic. It did not 
 
 escape Mr. Collier's corrector. Some of this person's emendations are 
 
 very good, as "Aristotle's eif^ic*," for " Aristotle's checks." — Tarn, of 
 
 Shrew, i. 1 ; others are very poor and prosaic. For " and a table of green 
 
LYCIDAS. 501 
 
 And the true blood, "SffhiQh. peeps fairly through it. 
 
 Winter's Tale, iv. 3. 
 And the true blood, vfhich. fairly peeps through it. 
 
 'Tis but the boldness of his hand haply, 
 
 Which his heart was not consenting to. — AlVs Well, iii. 2. 
 
 'Tis haply but the boldness of his hand, 
 
 To which his heart was not consenting, madam. 
 
 No, some of it for my child's father. — As You Like It, i. 3. 
 
 No, some of it for vaj father's child.* 
 
 But makes one pardon strong. — I pardon him 
 
 With all my heart. — A god on earth thou art. — Rich. II. v. 3. 
 
 But makes one pardon strong. — With, all my heart 
 I pardon him. — A god on earth thou art. 
 
 AJmost with ra/oished listening, could not find. 
 
 Hen. nil i. 2. 
 Almost with listening ravished, could not find. 
 
 Of substitution, the cases are numerous, and this is in 
 effect the great cause of the difficulties in Shakespeare. 
 Indeed, we think it might be almost laid down as a rule, 
 that a passage, to give a meaning to which astuteness is 
 requisite in the critic, cannot be as it came from the 
 pen of the poet. His text, if we had it pure, would, we 
 are convinced, present no critical difficulties whatever. 
 
 The substituted word resembles the true one, some- 
 times in form, sometimes in meaning.! 
 
 fields," [Hen. V. iii. 3,) he reads, "on a table of green frieze :" Theo- 
 bald, " and a' hahhled of green fields," and it is difficult to decide be- 
 tween them. Would not talTcd have given table more readily than 
 babbled ? 
 
 * This was first proposed by Coleridge, and is confirmed by Mr. Col- 
 lier's corrector, and by common sense. 
 
 t Of this last case, the following are indubitable examples. 
 
 In the Faery Queen (ii. 2, 42) we meet with the foUowiag line : — 
 
 A yearly solemn feast she wont to malce, 
 
 to which the rimes are hold, told. Now it is quite plain that the poet 
 \\Tote, and the compositor read, hold, but that the word changed in his 
 
302 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Braoh Merriman, the poor cur is embossed. 
 
 Taming of Shrew, Induct. 
 Here the true word is bathe, as many have seen, bathing, 
 or fomenting, being the exact cure for an embossing, or 
 swelHng. Would any sportsman say Hound Merriman 
 
 of one of the dogs ? 
 
 I will depart in quiet, 
 And, in despite of mirth, mean to be merry. 
 
 Com. of Errors, iii. 1. 
 For mirth read m^ wife. 
 
 I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, 
 
 Have you so slander any moment leisure. 
 
 As to give words or talk with the lord Hamlet. — KoAn. i. 3. 
 
 Read squander any moment's leisure* 
 
 I write good creature : wheresoe'er she is. 
 Her heart weighs heavy. — AlVs Well, iii. 5. 
 
 As no critic has made, or can make, any sense of lorite 
 in this place, should we not substitute wote, or rather, 
 warrant, and read — 
 
 I wote [or warrant\ good creature, wheresoe'er she is, 
 Her heart weighs heavy ? 
 
 And it does indifferent well in a <?«mW-coloured stock. 
 
 Twelfth Night, i. 3. 
 
 mind as he was at work. The proof-sheet also was probably read by 
 Spenser himself. We also meet (ii. 2, 7) chace as the rime to day, 
 dismay and (v. 4, 7) near, to few. 
 
 E/Ossetti, in his Amor Platonico (p. 912), when transcribing a canzone 
 from Petrarca, vsTote, — 
 
 Mi si scoperse, onde mi nacqne un gelo. 
 The word before his eyes was ghiaccio, and the rime hraccio, and yet 
 he did not discern the error, even in the proof-sheet. 
 
 Nothing could be more satisfactory than the manner in which the 
 proofs of the present work have come to the author ; they have been 
 exact copies of the MS. Among the very few variations was the for 
 some. Now, as tlie word was very legibly written, the very same thing 
 must have occurred as in the printing of the Faery Queen : as the made 
 very good sense, perhaps no one but the author himself would have sus- 
 pected it, and even he had to refer to the MS. 
 
 * The very same correction was made by Mr. Collier's corrector. 
 
LYCIDAS. 303 
 
 Pope proposed '^ Jlame-Goloxnedi" which has been gene- 
 rally followed. Our own conjectures have been dun, da- 
 mask, dainty, and we inclme to prefer the last, as Sir An- 
 drew speaks afterwards of the Clown's '^ mellifluous yoicQ ;" 
 daintie, badly written, might easily look like dam'd. 
 
 The three following passages, we are convinced, never 
 came in their present form from the pen of Shakespeare. 
 
 Come thick night. 
 And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell. 
 That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
 Nor Heaven 'pee'p through the hlanket of the dark. 
 To cry. Hold, hold \—Macb. i. 5. 
 
 At no time could the image in the fourth line have 
 
 been otherwise than low and ludicrous; and surely no 
 
 good poet, having mentioned the mantle of night, would 
 
 repeat the image, under at least a meaner form. We 
 
 would hazard — 
 i 
 
 Nor Heaven peer through the blackness of the dark. 
 
 Peer or pear is appear, and blackness of dark is like 
 brightness of liglit. 
 
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune, 
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles. 
 And by opposing end them. — Ham. iii. 1. 
 
 A good poet usually has the image present to his mind ; 
 and the idea of taking arms against a sea ! It reminds 
 one of Dame Partington. A siege was our own con- 
 jecture, as well as Pope's ; others have proposed assay. 
 We should prefer assays to this last. 
 
 Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night. 
 That runaways'* eyes may wink, and Eomeo 
 Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen. 
 
 Rom. and Jul. iii. 2. 
 
304 ■ WRITINGS or MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Various have been the conjectures here : our own is 
 Rumour s. In the Induction to 2 Henry IV., and else- 
 where, Rumour answers to the Pame of the classics, who 
 is described in the ^neis, as being on the watch at 
 night to collect inteUigence to be blazed abroad by day, 
 and wink plainly intimates that there was some one on 
 the watch to detect the lovers. Juhet then wishes the 
 gloom to be so intense, that Rumour's eyes must wink 
 perforce, and Romeo thus be able to leap to her arms 
 unseen. The play of words on Rumour and Romeo, and 
 the allusion to Virgil, would suit with the turn of the 
 poet's mind at that period.* 
 
 The punctuation of the folios is of course often erro- 
 neous. The following instance, we believe, has not been 
 observed if — 
 
 Hang out our banners on the outer walls ; 
 
 The cry is still: They come. — Macb. v. 5. . 
 
 Now, as the banner was hung from the keep, not from 
 the walls, we surely should read : — 
 
 Hang out our banners. On the outer walla 
 The cry is still : They come. 
 
 From a close examination of Shakespeare's verse, we 
 will venture to assert, that he never used a short line, ex- 
 cept at the beginning or end of a paragraph or complete 
 sentence ; and that when such occurs, — unless where part 
 of a line has been lost, — it is caused by wrong arrange- 
 
 * In Peele's Edward I. are the two foUowing lines, of which the most 
 accomplished editor, Mr. Dyce, owns he could make no sense : — 
 Saint Ceres' sweets and Bacchus' wine. — Page 92, ed. Dyce. 
 Thank Britain s strife of Scotland's climbing peers. — lb. p. 104. 
 We would read Sans, wheat, and Th' ambitious. 
 
 t This observation is notour own ; we learned it in conversation. We 
 should feel inclined to write banner, as printers are sometimes rather 
 liberal of their «'s. 
 
LYCIDAS. 305 
 
 ment, and can be easily rectified.* Two of these short 
 Hnes sometimes happened to meet, as — 
 
 This guest of summer, 
 Tlie temple-haunting martlet doth approve, 
 By this loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here. — No juttj, friese, 
 Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird 
 Has made his pendent bed and procreant cradle. — Mach. i. 6. 
 
 The actor should, we think, pause at here, and take a 
 survey of the castle, before he proceeds. 
 
 The figure Aposiopesis occurs in Shakespeare, as in 
 all poets, ancient and modern, whose style is at all drama- 
 tic. By its aid, as we have shown in various places of 
 Virgil and Horace, many grammatical difficulties may be 
 removed. The critics seem not to have observed it in — 
 
 I do profess, 
 That for your Highness' good I ever laboured, 
 More than my own, that am, have, and will be . . . 
 Though all the world, etc.— Hen. VIII. iii. 2. 
 
 He was a man, take him for all in all . . . 
 
 I shall not look upon his like again. — Sam. i. 2. 
 
 He is about to give a character of his father, when grief 
 
 stops him. 
 
 The dram of evil 
 Doth all the noble substance, of a doubt. 
 To his ovsn scandal . . . Look, my lord ! it comes. — lb. 
 
 He has been all along speaking in an involved, cir- 
 cuitous manner, to conceal his feelings, and he has not 
 finished his sentence when the Ghost appears. 
 
 We adopt the reading of the Quarto of 1604, reading 
 for eale, evil, as it has (ii. 1) deale for devil. It might 
 
 * Editors in general seem not to have recollected that our dramatic 
 verse admits of frequent anapaests. See below, on the Verse of Paradise 
 Lost. 
 
 X 
 
306 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 however be ill, i. e. eil, from evil, like een from even. 
 Of a doubt is like of a truth, etc. Query, out d doubt ? 
 
 The printers frequently made verses short and inhar- 
 monious by their abbreviations, and it is really annoying 
 to see how slavishly editors follow them. Thus, for ex- 
 ample, we meet ifs and 'tis, instead of it is, 's instead of 
 kis, to instead of unto, and the syncopated instead of the 
 full perfect of the verb, as lov'd, enjoy d, etc.* 
 
 To conclude. There are various places in Shakespeare 
 where verse has been printed as prose. f This appears 
 from the ease with which they can be arranged as verse, 
 a thing which cannot be done with true prose. In All's 
 Well, etc. iii. 2, for example, there are two letters both 
 in prose, of one of which no ingenuity could make verse, 
 while the other would be arranged as follows : — 
 
 " When thou canst get tlie ring upon my finger 
 "Which never shall come off, and show me a child 
 Begotten of thy body, that I am father to, 
 Then call me husband. But in such a tlien 
 I write a never T — This is a dreadful sentence. 
 
 So again in Romeo and Juliet, iii. 1 : — 
 
 Good king of cats. 
 Nothing but one of your nine lives, that I 
 Mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall 
 Use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight. 
 
 * Thus in Milton's own editions we meet : — 
 
 Gather'd like scum and setVd to itself. — Comus, 595. 
 Self-fed and Eeli-consum'' d, if this fail. — Ih. 597. 
 
 No editor has retained this orthography ; but, had it been Shakespeare, 
 it would have been sacred in the eyes of critics. 
 
 t In the Tempest, Caliban always speaks in blank verse ; for, as he 
 had been taught language by Prospero, he can only speak as he speaks. 
 When will the wonderful judgement of Shakespeare, which Jonson 
 discerned so clearly, be generally recognized! Hotspur also speaks 
 throughout in verse in 1 Hen. IV. iii. 1. 
 
ITALIAN SONNETS. 307 
 
 Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by 
 The ears ? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears, 
 Ere it be out. 
 
 Every other place might with the same ease be con- 
 verted to verse. 
 
 We may here inform the reader, that in all our me- 
 tric criticisms, we go on the principle, which to us has 
 the force of an axiom, that no true poet can write inhar- 
 monious verses. The very last whom we should suspect 
 of such is Shakespeare, one of whose leading character- 
 istics is sweetness, — as we believe Coleridge has some- 
 where observed, — and whose early verse, as in the Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona and the Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 is actually mellifluous.* 
 
 We now return to Milton, and observe that with Ly- 
 cidas terminated the series of beautiful poetry, of which 
 Horton witnessed the birth. His next verses were writ- 
 ten in a foreign country, and in a foreign language. 
 
 THE ITALIAN SONNETS. 
 Milton had been familiar with the works of the great 
 poets of modern Italy, probably from an early age ; and, 
 for an ear like his, the melody of Italian verse must have 
 had peculiar charms. During his residence in Florence, 
 he even ventured to essay his powers in the composition 
 of verses in that language, which were probably received 
 with the indulgence due to the poetic efforts of a man of 
 
 * All the preceding observations apply with as much force to Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher as to Shakespeare. We regret that their able editor, 
 Mr. Dyce, has not more frequently ventured to restore the harmony of 
 their verse, — at least to indicate the restoration. In too many places, 
 also, verse remains printed as prose, while the fact is, there is hardly 
 any real prose in the great majority of their Plays. 
 
 X 2 
 
308 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 genius in an idiom not his own, and were honoured with 
 the approbation of his learned Itahan friends. When 
 pubhshing his Poems in 1645, he inserted among them 
 five Sonnets and a short Canzone in the language of Italy. 
 Johnson says of these pieces, " I have heard them com- 
 mended by a man well qualified to decide their merit." 
 The person he meant was Baretti, and his opinion has, 
 we believe, been the prevalent one ever since, and as far 
 as regards the poetry it is evidently just. But it always 
 struck us in reading these poems, that they had the fault 
 common and almost inevitable to modern Latin poetry, 
 namely, that of confounding the language and style of dif- 
 ferent periods ; that, in fact, though written in the middle 
 of the seventeenth century, they presented forms pecu- 
 liar to Dante and the poets of the fourteenth century. 
 We therefore marked the passages in which we thought 
 we had discerned this fault, and then submitted them 
 to the criticism of our friend, the late Gabriele Rossetti, 
 himself a poet of a high order, and inferior to none in 
 the critical knowledge of the poetry of his native lan- 
 guage. In every instance our conjectures were right. In 
 our notes on these poems we have given our friend's ob- 
 servations : his concluding remark is as follows : — 
 
 " lo per me mene uscirei con poclie parole, dicendo che lo scri- 
 vere in lingua straniera e state per Milton un' audacia di eui il 
 solo successo potrebbe giustificarlo ; ma cbe sventuratamente non e 
 cosi." 
 
 These and two Latin poems were the products of the 
 Miltonic muse in the bright regions of the South. After 
 his return to England, and during a space of more than 
 twenty years, all that he has left us is a few sonnets, 
 some translations, and two more Latin poems. 
 
SONNETS. 309 
 
 SONNET VIII. 
 Captain, or Colonel, or knight in a/rms. 
 
 When, in 1642, the King's forces had advanced to 
 Brentford, and it was expected that he would make an 
 attack on the city, and not without a fair prospect of 
 success, Milton, revolving in his mind the events which 
 often occurred in such cases, composed the following 
 ideal address to the conquerors. The poet was at this 
 time residing in his garden-house in Aldersgate Street. 
 
 This sonnet is one of the two which Johnson allowed 
 to be " not bad ;" Warton terms it one of his best , the 
 same was the opinion of Wordsworth. 
 
 SONNET IX. 
 Lady that in the prime of earliest youth. 
 
 As this and the following sonnet both appeared in 
 the edition of his Poems in 1645, they must^have been 
 written before that year, and the most Hkely date ap- 
 pears to be 1644. We know not who this "virtuous 
 young lady" was ; but it is not impossible that she 
 may have been the Miss Davis to whom he paid his ad- 
 dresses when his wife had deserted him. If such was 
 the case, we may regard it as a piece of grave and 
 elegant religious courtship, and it gives a high idea 
 of the lady's virtues, at least in the eyes of her admirer. 
 
 SONNET X. 
 Daughter to that good Marl, once President. 
 
 The person to whom this sonnet is addressed was the 
 Lady Margaret Ley, daughter of Sir James Ley, who 
 being an able lawyer had risen through the great posts 
 of the Law under James I., who created him Earl of 
 
310 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Marlborough, and made him Lord High Treasurer and 
 President of the Council. He died on the 14th of 
 March, 1628-9; and as the last Parliament which King 
 Charles convoked previous to entering on his course of 
 reckless despotism was dissolved only four days pre- 
 viously, Milton chooses to ascribe his death to grief at 
 that event. Lady Margaret was married to Captain 
 Hobson, of the Isle of Wight; and Milton, when de- 
 serted by his wife, was a frequent visitor at their house 
 in London. The sonnet is a pleasing composition, and 
 we do not discern in it any defects. 
 
 SONNETS XI. XII. 
 A hooh was writ of late called Tetrachordon. 
 I did hut prompt the age to quit their clogs. 
 
 These two sonnets were written apparently in 1645, 
 on account of the reception which his works on the sub- 
 ject of divorce had met with from the Presbyterians, who 
 were then in power. The first expresses his contempt 
 and dislike of the Scots ; the second, his scorn of those 
 who claimed a liberty for themselves which they would 
 not accord to others. On account probably of their per- 
 sonal and political character, he did not insert them in 
 his edition of his Poems ; he printed them however in 
 1673. Johnson says of them, " The first is contemptible, 
 and the second not excellent." To show his aversion to 
 the sonnet, as a mode of poetic composition, he gives the 
 former as the specimen of it in his Dictionary. 
 
 SONNET XIII. (XIV.) 
 When Faith and Love which parted from thee never. 
 This sonnet, which first appeared in the edition of 
 
SONNETS. 311 
 
 1673, is inscribed in the Cambridge MS. "On the reli- 
 gious memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christian 
 friend, deceased 16 Decemb. 1646." When it was writ- 
 ten Milton was living at his house in Barbican. Who 
 Mrs. Thomson was (for it is plain from v. 5 that she 
 was married), is quite uncertain. Newton, observing 
 that when Milton was made Latin Secretary (in 1648) 
 he went to lodge at one Thomson's at Charing Cross, 
 thinks that she may have been one of this family. It 
 may have been so, but we have no proof of it. The 
 sonnet is excellent, redolent of pure and exalted religion. 
 
 SONNETS XIV. XY. (XX. XXI.) 
 Lawrence J of virtuous father virtuous son. 
 CyriaCj whose grandsire on the royal bench. 
 
 It might seem that, after the death of his father, Mil- 
 ton, who probably found no great pleasure in the insipid 
 society of his wife, used to hold social meetings (perhaps . 
 at taverns), with some of his more intellectual friends, 
 where their conversation was enlivened by wine and 
 music, Henry Lawes being probably one of the party. 
 Possibly, however, these sonnets might have been writ- 
 ten during his bachelor- days, and he regarded them as 
 of too personal a nature to be printed among his Poems. 
 In composing them he had evidently some of Horace's 
 odes in view, and candour must acknowledge that he is 
 very far from attaining, if he sought it, to the ease and 
 gaiety of the Sabine bard. We have above noticed Law- 
 rence and Skinner among Milton's friends. 
 
 SONNET XVI. (XIII.) 
 Sarry^ whose tuneful and well-measured song. 
 The date of this sonnet in Milton's MS. is February 5, 
 
312 WRITINGS or MILTON VERSE. 
 
 1645-6, though the work to which it alludes was not 
 pubhshed till 1648. Possibly the poet, knowing that 
 the work was in preparation, got his sonnet ready for 
 presentation on its appearance. It is not one of Milton's 
 best productions, but it is a pleasing testimony to the 
 talents and merits of a friend. 
 
 In our account of Henry Lawes, given in the Pirst 
 Part of this work, we observed that Dr. Burney spoke 
 slightingly of him as a composer. We will here give 
 the opposite opinion of a learned and scientific musician 
 on Lawes and on Milton's sonnet, which is, we believe, 
 equivalent to that of Burney. 
 
 s^ Of Milton's sonnet I would say, that it is tlie language of sim- 
 ple truth, and sound and discriminating criticism, conveyed in the 
 dress of poetry. Milton sees, knows, describes his friend's pecu- 
 liar excellence. He is the exception to the general rule. Other 
 writers, ancient or modem, in prose or in poetry, rarely speak of 
 music without betraying their ignorance of it. They deal in vague 
 generalities, or, if they attempt anything more, blunder. Mil- 
 ton, whenever he speaks of music — and how often does the divine 
 Art present itself to his mind ! — is always strictly, technically cor- 
 rect. Whoever is acquainted with Henry Lawes' music, and espe- 
 cially whoever compares it with the compositions of his predeces- 
 sors, will see the truth and discrimination of Milton's commenda- 
 tion. Lawes was one of the earliest of the English melodists — 
 the father of that style of writing which was successively culti- 
 vated by Purcell, Eccles, Weldon, Howard, Boyce, Battishill, Ar- 
 nold, and Shield ; and, in that department of his art, was in no 
 respect behind his Italian contemporaries, Cesti, Caccini, and 
 Cavalli. 
 
 In this sonnet Milton alludes to Lawes' Cantata " Theseus and 
 Ariadne ;" for as a marginal note — not preserved in modern edi- 
 tions of it — to the eleventh line these words are added, " The 
 story of Ariadne by him set to Musick." This composition Milton 
 must have seen in MS., for it was not published till 1653, seven 
 years after he wrote his sonnet. I mention this as an acci- 
 dental proof of the intimacy that continued between Lawes and 
 
SONNETS. 313 
 
 Milton. We may picture to ourselves (what no doubt happened) 
 the two friends trying this composition over, — Lawes inviting, and 
 Milton giving his opinion on its merits previous to publication.* 
 
 SONNET xvn. 
 
 Because ye hcwe thrown offyow prelate-lord. 
 
 When Presbyterianism was established in England, 
 the ministers of that most intolerant creed began to 
 enforce it with the utmost rigour on the reluctant peo- 
 ple. Milton, who had both public and private reasons 
 for disliking the Presbyterians, discharged this sonnet 
 against them, probably in 1646 or 1647. It is the 
 only specimen in our language of what the Italians call 
 the Sonetto con coda which Berni used; but he was 
 probably not the inventor of it, as three sonnets of this 
 kind appear among those of Ariosto, which however 
 could not have been known to Milton, as they were 
 not published till the eighteenth century. This kind of 
 sonnet was used by the Italians only on humorous and 
 satirical subjects. Milton adheres closely to the Italian 
 model in its structure. 
 
 SONNET XVIII. (XV.) 
 Fairfax, wTiose name in arms through Eu/rope rings. 
 
 Pive of Milton's sonnets, — namely, the present, that to 
 Cromwell, the two to Cyriac Skinner, and that to Sir 
 Henry Vane, — were, for obvious reasons, omitted in the 
 edition of 1673. They were first printed after the Re- 
 
 * Some unrecorded Passages in the Life of John Milton, by Edward 
 Taylor, Gresham Professor of Music, in the Christian Keformer for 
 January, 1846. Mr. Taylor further observes, as a proof of Milton's 
 freedom from party rancour, that the "Choice Psalmes" to which this 
 sonnet was prefixed was dedicated to " His most Sacred Majestic, 
 Charles, by the grace of God," etc. 
 
314 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 volution, by Phillips, in his Life of Milton, in 1694. It 
 appears from the poet's MS. that this sonnet was ad- 
 dressed to Fairfax, at the siege of Colchester in 1648. 
 It respires the dignity of virtue and public spirit, and 
 was admired by Wordsworth. 
 
 SOISTISTET XIX. (XVI.) 
 Cromwell J our chief of men, who through a cloud. 
 
 In Milton's MS. this sonnet is inscribed " To the Lord 
 General Cromwell, May, 1652. On the Proposals of cer- 
 tain Ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the 
 Gospel.'^ Like the preceding, it is directed against the 
 Presbyterians, whom Milton hated. Warton, with all his 
 prejudices, owns that " there is great dignity both of sen- 
 timent and expression in this sonnet." Wordsworth also 
 admired it. 
 
 SOJSTNET XX. (XYII.) 
 Vane, young inyea/rs, hut in sage counsel old. 
 
 In the MS. there is neither date nor title to this son- 
 net. As it seems to be directed against the Presbyte- 
 rians, Warton thinks it was written about the same time 
 as that to Cromwell. 
 
 SONNET XXI. (XIX.) 
 When I consider how my light is spent. 
 
 Milton, as we have seen, became totally blind in 1653, 
 or early in 1654. It is probable therefore that it was 
 soon after that event, while the calamity was fresh on 
 him, that he composed this noble sonnet, replete with 
 pious humility and resignation. It is remarkable that 
 this and the following sonnet, and that addressed to 
 Lawrence, do not appear in the Cambridge MS. 
 
SONNETS. 315 
 
 SOIS^NET XXII. (XVIII.) 
 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose hones. 
 
 In 1655, the Duke of Savoy commenced a barbarous 
 persecution of the Valdenses, his Protestant subjects in 
 the valleys of Piedmont, to make them embrace Popery, 
 or quit their country. Cromwell exerted himself nobly 
 in their favour ; and Milton, as Latin Secretary, wrote on 
 this occasion several letters in his name. His mind dwell- y 
 ing on the subject gave birth to this fine sonnet. 
 
 SONIS^ET XXIII. (XXII.) 
 Cyriac, this three years' day these eyes, though clear. 
 
 The date of this sonnet is, of course, 1656, or early in 
 1657. Like that on his blindness, it breathes the spirit 
 of resignation, but, as being addressed to another, in a 
 bolder tone. 
 
 SONNET XXIV. (XXIII.) 
 Methought I saw my late espoused saint. 
 
 This, the last of Milton's short poetic compositions, 
 was probably written in February, 1658, as his second 
 wife died in the early part of that month. Even Johnson 
 allowed, that it was " not bad ; " other critics are unani- 
 mous in praising it. 
 
 Hayley and Todd have compared with this sonnet, 
 H aura mia sacra of Petrarca (11. Son. 78), and Quando 
 de minhas magoas. of Camoes (Son. 72). They might 
 have added Levommi il mio pensier, the most famous of 
 Petrarca' s sonnets, for it is at least a day-dream, and the 
 Dorniendo un giorno, in sonno mi parea, of Boccaccio. 
 We do not see any traces of imitation on the part of 
 Milton, and he probably was only acquainted with the 
 sonnets of Petrarca. 
 
316 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 TEANSLATIONS. 
 
 Every reader of the prose works of Milton must have 
 observed in them the total absence of those passages 
 from the ancients in the original languages, which occur 
 in the text, or fill the margins, of other writers of the time. 
 Milton, on the contrary, always translates his quotations, 
 not only in prose but in verse. For this purpose he em- 
 ploys blank verse, even in versions from Dante and Pe- 
 trarca ; while, if there was already an English translation, 
 he does not disdain to use it. Thus in two quotations 
 from Ariosto, he gives the one exactly, the other some- 
 what altered from Sir John Harrington's translation of 
 the Orlando Furioso ;* and we may be quite sure, that 
 had he had occasion to quote from Tasso, it would have 
 been from Fairfax's translation. 
 
 In the spring of the year 1648, Milton translated nine 
 of the Psalms (Ixxx.-lxxxviii.) into English verse; and 
 so anxious was he about fidelity, that he printed in a 
 different character the words which the necessity of the 
 verse obliged him to add. In the early part of the month 
 of August, 1653, he translated eight more (i.-viii.), but 
 not with the same solicitude. From his thus rendering 
 them consecutively, it is not unlikely that he meditated 
 a translation of the entire book of Psalms. 
 
 The only translation which we possess of an entire 
 poem by Milton from the classic languages, is that of the 
 Ode of Horace to Pyrrha, "rendered almost word for 
 word, without rime, according to the Latin measure, as 
 
 * Harrington's version of the altered passage is as follows : — 
 Then by a fair green monntain he did pass, 
 That once smelt sweet, but now it stinks perdie. 
 This was that gift — be it said without offence — 
 That Constantine gave Silvester long since. 
 
TRANSLATIONS. 317 
 
 near as the language will admit," as he informs us in the 
 title prefixed to it in the edition of 1673, where it first 
 appeared. It was probably therefore made after 1645, 
 but it is uncertain when ; probably while he was still en- 
 gaged in teaching. 
 
 The remark of its being made " according to the Latin 
 measure," is of importance, as it shows that even Milton 
 was ignorant, or negligent, of the proper metric mode 
 of reading Greek and Latin poetry. His version has not 
 the slightest resemblance to the original, according to its 
 scansion, but a very strong one if we read it in the 
 manner usual in our schools, and in those of Italy; in 
 Germany it is diff'erent. Thus we read the first stanza as 
 follows : — 
 
 Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa 
 
 Perfusus liquidis urguet oddribus 
 Grato, P/rrlia, sub antro ? 
 Cui flavam religas comam ? * 
 
 With this the measure of the translation very nearly 
 accords : — 
 
 What slender youtli, bedew' d with liquid odours, 
 Courts tbee on roses in some pleasant cave, 
 Py'rrha ? for whom bindest thou 
 In wreaths thy golden hair ? t 
 
 We have said that Milton did not understand the 
 exact sense of this Ode, and let us not be accused of 
 presumption when we add, that not a single one of the 
 editors of Horace appears to us to have understood it. 
 
 * The proper metric accentuation is, — 
 
 Quis multa graciKs te puer in rosa 
 Perfusus hquidis urguet odoribiis 
 Grato Pyrrha sub antro? 
 Cui flavam religas comam P 
 t This stanza is in reahty the three last lines unrimed of a Spen- 
 serian stanza. 
 
318 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 This we shall presently attempt to show, but we will first 
 point out some of Milton's errors. 
 
 The Latin urguet is not correctly rendered by courts, 
 which is not at all suitable to the position which the 
 critics, and of course Milton, assign the lovers. In 
 wreaths does not, we think, accurately express the mode 
 in which the Roman ladies dressed their hair : religas 
 (an intensive verb) rather indicates that it was in tresses 
 tightly fastened round the head. Simplex munditiis is, 
 in our opinion, better expressed by Milton's " plain in 
 thy neatness," than by Warton's " plain in your orna- 
 ments ;" for munditicB never meant earrings, necklaces, 
 etc. * Simply neat and elegant' seems to be the meaning 
 of the phrase, and the poet may have had her hair alone 
 in view, as Ovid says, — 
 
 Munditiis capimur ; nee sint sine lege capilli. 
 
 Milton perhaps was not aware that mutatam was to be 
 understood vf'iihjldem, or that aspera was i. q. asperata, 
 roughened ;* eiiviror, as being intensive, is to gaze on with 
 utter amazement, and not merely to admire ; and falla- 
 cious, deceiving, and not flattering, is the meaning oifal- 
 laoi. Finally, potens maris is simply ruler of the sea, and 
 sternness formed no part of the sea-god's character. 
 
 After having already transgressed by digression, we 
 have hardly the courage to venture on a second ofience. 
 Yet, relying on the indulgence of the reader, we will 
 here insert a comment on this Ode of our favourite 
 classic poet, which has been lying in our scrinia these 
 many years, — our last dealing with the Classics. 
 
 * See our Virgil, Excurs. IX. 
 
TRANSLATIONS. 319 
 
 HORACE. CARM. I. 5. 
 
 I have been always of the opinion, that those Odes of Horace 
 which are addressed to persons with significant Greek names, are 
 purely ideal, mere fancy-pieces ; of which species of composition 
 there is far more in Latin literature than is usually supposed. 
 Such, for example, is, I think, the Amores of Ovid, and such of 
 course is the present Ode. 
 
 The critics in general suppose the youth and Pyrrha to be lying 
 — solus cum sola, as Orelli expresses it from Terence — on a bed of 
 roses in a grotto, and that Horace foretells that she will prove 
 faithless to him, as she had done to himself- Lord Kaimes further 
 remarked, that in vv. 9, 10, the allegory is broken, contrary to the 
 principles of taste, to which objection the critics have made no 
 valid reply. My own opinion is that all these suppositions are 
 wrong. The ancients knew nothing of beds of roses ; Horace's 
 sense of delicacy and propriety was such, that in speaking of love 
 elsewhere in his Odes, he never even hints at anything improper ; 
 and in those to imaginary ladies, like Pyrrha, he is always scrupu- 
 lously delicate ; and finally, he was of too fine a taste and too well 
 acquainted with the rules of composition to violate them by break- 
 ing an allegory. My idea is, that the scene is an ej^ulce in a grotto 
 — a thing which, as Orelli tells us, is customary at the present 
 day, — in which Pyrrha lies on the same lectus, or sofa, with her 
 lover ; that it is the uncertainty of her temper, and not her infi- 
 delity, of which the poet speaks, and that the allegory which com- 
 mences in V. 5 is preserved unbroken to the end, the parallels 
 being the surface of the sea and the countenance of the lady. 
 The following commentary on the Ode will, I hope, justify these 
 assertions. 
 
 In multa rosa. " JN'on de coronis cogitandum, sed de lecto rosa- 
 rum cumulo strato, id quod potissimum demonstrat v. multa, quod 
 de corona acceptum prope ridiculum foret : tum praepos. in quae 
 item de corona usurpari non poterat." (Oe.) Now Horace, like the 
 other ancient poets, when speaking of his own times, always gives 
 their manners and usages correctly, and surely no one can sup- 
 pose that roses were so abundant at Eome that beds could be 
 formed of their leaves, covering the floor of a grotto ; for that is the 
 view of the critics. On the contrary, Cicero (Yerr. v. 11) gives as 
 an instance of the enormous luxury of Yerres, that he had a pillow 
 stuffed with them. The following place, however, is quoted from 
 ^Elian (Yar. Hist. ix. 24) : — <^vAAot9 poScuv cTravaTrco-wv {'%fXLv8vpL8rj<s 6 
 
820 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 'S,v^apLT7]s) KOi KOLiJir]0el<s ctt avroiv, l^aviaTq Xiytav <^XvKTaiva<i Ik t^s 
 €.vvrj<s ^x^tv. But Sybaris was before tbe times of history, and to 
 the later Grreeks it was a sort of Pays de Cocagne, about whose 
 luxury all kinds of fables (this among the rest) were invented. 
 Another place which is cited is the following from Philostratus 
 (Ep. 27) : Kttt (Tov Beofxat ov (rrecfiavovcrOai fiovov, aXXa koI KOLfxrjOrjvai 
 €7rt poSoiv, which at most can only allude to a pillow like that of 
 Verres. The in rosa jaceat of Seneca (Ep, 36, 9) is only a sup- 
 posed case, and the in odoribus jacet of the same writer (Ep. 82, 2) 
 evidently refers to the anointing of the dead body. These are, I 
 believe, all the proofs that have been produced by the advocates 
 of the bed of roses. On the other side, in opposition to Orelli's 
 strange assertion respecting the use of in, may be adduced, d ^wrjv 
 fxcT evfiova-ia? akl S* ev crTe^avoto-tv etrjv, Eur. Here. Eur. G77. 
 KocTjxdv kavras, fx-q iv irXiyfxacTLV, ■^ XP^^^ "^ /xapyaptVats, 1 Tim. ii. 9. 
 ^t cajDut in verna semper habere rosa, Prop. iii. 3, 44. In jaculis 
 et pelle' Lihystidis ursae, Yirg. Aen. v. 37. In viola aut in rosa 
 dicere, Cic. Tusc. v. 26. Fotentem in rosa, Id. Ein. ii. 20 (these 
 last two given by Orelli himself), in armis, etc. In fact this use 
 of in runs through most languages. We ourselves say, a lady in 
 a cap, in a veil, in her hair, etc, ; and the Erench en chapeau, etc. ; 
 so also in Italian and Spanish. As to multa, I see not any force in 
 Orelli's objection. MuUils thus used in the singular is ona?iy a, and 
 here it is used to intimate that the wreath of roses was a large 
 full one. Eor the use of roses for this purpose, see Carm. i. 36, 
 15 ; ii. 3, 14 ; iii. 15, 15, et alib. I further think that in multa 
 rosa should be joined with^w<5r, and not with te, as she was appa- 
 rently simply in her hair. — Perfusus, etc. This shows that it was 
 an epulce, for it was only on such occasions that the E-omans in 
 general put fragrant liquids or unguents on their hair: comp. 
 ii. 7, 7, 22 ; 11, 16 ; iii. 29, 4, et alib. These were usually supplied 
 by the person who gave the entertainment. — Urcjuet. I do not be- 
 lieve that a single instance can be produced of the use of this 
 verb in the sense of " arte amplectitur." (Or.) Its meaning is to 
 press or push from or against, and I conceive that here it signifies 
 ' lies close to,' sc. on the lectus or sofa. We should say, sits close 
 to. The youth and Pyrrha, as we have said, occupied the same 
 sofa, and he lay above her. — Bub antro, i. q. in antro, see my note 
 on Ov. East. i. 186. Eor this custom see Ov. East. ii. 315 scq. ; 
 Tac. Ann. iv. 59. 
 
 We now come to the figure in which he likens Pyrrha to the 
 
LTCIDAS. 321 
 
 sea, and we may observe that the allusion to her name (already- 
 made in Jlavam comam), is still kept up. — fidem, sc. mutatam. It 
 applies to the sea, as well as to the lady; iov fides is the ground of 
 trust, reliance, confidence. Virgil uses infidum marmor, Geor. i. 
 254, and fides pelagi, Mn. iii. 69, of the sea ; compare ^n. v. 849 ; 
 and Isocrates has, in prose, t^v aTna-Tiav tov TroXifiov, Archid. § 21. 
 — niffris, as opposed to the aurea of v. 9. — cequora, i. q. cEquor, the 
 surface of the sea, i. e. her countenance. — fruitur. This verb may 
 be used of the sea, as well as of porticoes, Ep. i. 1, 71. — awea. 
 This may allude to the colour of her hair^ as well as to the sere- 
 nity of her countenance, and the blandness of her manners. Pro- 
 pertius has (iv. 7, 85) aurea OyntMa, and Tibullus (i. 6, 58) att- 
 ream anum. As applied to the sea, it may denote its splendour in 
 the rays of the sun. Aureus is used of sol, luna, and cether, deno- 
 ting brightness. — vacuaon, sc. a ventis, v. 7, of the sea ; irarum, the 
 tempest of the mind, of Pyrrha, the tristes Amaryllidos iras of 
 Virgil, that is, bursts of temper. — amahilem (eparctvov). In iii. 
 13, 10, he has frigus amahile, and Virgil (Geor. iv. 478) has palus 
 inamahilis. Why not then mare amahile ? In prose, Cicero has 
 (ad Fam. xvi. 18) Tusculanum erit amahilius. The French use 
 their aimahle in a similar manner, as aimahle grotte, and we our- 
 selves say, a lovely landscape, bay, sheet of water, etc. — Sperat, ex- 
 pects to he.—fallaciSj i. e. that may deceive, go contrary to his 
 expectations ; the uncertainty of her temper. — intentata, untried, 
 not embarked on : comp. Virg. Buc. iv. 32 ; with respect to her, 
 having had no experience of her changeful mood. — nites. As to 
 the applicability of this to the calm surface of the sea in the solar 
 beams, there can be no dispute. It also expresses the serenity of 
 her countenance, and the lustre of her hair and eyes. If the 
 ^sopic fable of the Shepherd and the Sea be as old as the times 
 of Horace, I should suspect him to have had it in his mind. At 
 all events he may have thought of these verses of Lucretius (v. 
 
 1002): 
 
 Nee poterat quemquam placidi peUacia ponti 
 Subdola peUicere in fraudem ridentibus undis. 
 
 The remainder is easy. Horace says, that he himself had em- 
 barked on this apparently calm and tranquil sea, and that such a 
 tempest had arisen, that he had hardly made his escape from the 
 waves in which he was overwhelmed.* 
 
 * In another of Horace's Odes (ii. 17), the critics seem to have missed 
 
 Y 
 
322 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 SAMSOIN" AGOJSriSTES. 
 
 Thougli this was, in all likelihood, the last composed 
 of all Milton's poems, we place our notice of it here, as, 
 on account of its being of so different a nature from the 
 heroic poems, and so totally unconnected with them, it 
 would have been incongruous to have treated of them 
 together. 
 
 Samson Agonistes was first published in 1671, along 
 with Paradise Regained; which last poem, as we have 
 seen, was finished in 1666. As it is probable that the 
 mind of Milton could not remain in a state of inaction, 
 w^e may suppose that it reverted to his former idea of 
 composing dramas in the Greek manner, on sacred sub- 
 jects ; and that of Samson, though not included in the 
 list which he had drawn up, may, from the resemblance 
 of the fortunes of that hero to his own, have led to his 
 giving it the preference to any of the fine subjects con- 
 tained in that list, formed ere the clouds of misfortune 
 had descended on his head. Would that he had devoted 
 to them the time and labour wasted on now-neglected 
 controversies ! 
 
 Samson w^as a hero raised up by Heaven to be a chief 
 instrument in freeing his country from the yoke of the 
 idolatrous Philistines; in his simplicity he united himself 
 in marriage with a daughter of that race, and the conse- 
 quence was his blindness, his captivity, and his living to 
 fi^[ find all his work undone, and Israel, from its own w^ant 
 .-^ J^ of virtue and energy, still in bondage. Milton viewed 
 ^ ^/* himself also as raised up by Heaven to vindicate the 
 
 Y 
 
 the exact sense. Indeed one might almost fancy they took columen for 
 columna. The figure is that Maecenas and Horace formed an edifice, of 
 which the former was the roof, without which the latter was of little 
 worth. 
 
SAMSON AGONISTES. 323 
 
 cause of religious, civil, and domestic liberty, against ty- 
 ranny and superstition. In this cause he had long la- 
 boured with energy and with success, and in it he had 
 lost his sight ; he had lived to find all his work undone, 
 civil and rehgious despotism once more triumphant, and 
 the nation crouching beneath them, and himself in a state 
 of what might be viewed as bondage, as he could not 
 openly give utterance to his sentiments and feelings. He 
 too had married unadvisedly one of the opposite party, 
 and the ill-assorted union had embittered his life. In 
 the character of Samson therefore he could give vent to 
 his own feelings, and covertly reproach the people for 
 their want of true virtue and energy ; the dramatic form 
 also enabled him to deplore the fate of the heroes of the 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 But the Grecian drama also offered him parallels in 
 the noble-minded Prometheus, the victim of despotism, 
 from his fruitless attempts to serve mankind, and in 
 the unhappy CEdipus, whom Fate had sunk in blind- 
 ness and in misery. We may observe how he follows 
 the course of these dramas. Thus, in that of ^Eschylus, 
 Prometheus, when left to himself, soliloquizes on his 
 unhappy condition ; the Chorus then comes in, and joins 
 him. Oceanus next appears, to advise and offer his aid 
 for his liberation; when he is gone, lo arrives, and her 
 narrative ensues ; and then Hermes comes, sent by the 
 despot who had caused him to be chained on the rock, 
 requiring obedience from him, and meets with a reso- 
 lute refusal. In Milton's drama Samson is led in, and 
 is then left by himself, to soliloquize on his woes ; a 
 Chorus conies to console him ; his father Manoah next 
 arrives, and after some time departs, to try to effect his 
 liberation ; his wife, Dalila, and the giant Harapha then 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 appear in succession ; the first to excuse her treachery, 
 the latter to insult him. They are succeeded by the he- 
 rald sent by the Philistine lords, requiring him to come 
 and make them sport, and who departs on having re- 
 ceived a decided refusal. Here the parallelism with the 
 Prometheus ceases ; in what follows we may discern 
 an agreement with the CEdipus at Colonos. Oedipus de- 
 parts at a divine summons ; and Theseus, who had been 
 present at it, relates the catastrophe. In like manner 
 Samson, feeling internally a divine summons, departs, and 
 one who had witnessed his end appears, and narrates 
 it. The visit of Polyneices to his blind father is a pa- 
 rallel to that of Dalila to her husband, whose misery she 
 had caused. The opening lines of the Samson also have 
 a resemblance to those of the CEdipus. 
 
 We have always regarded this as a noble poem, the 
 swan-song of a mighty genius. In the eye of criticism, 
 free from pedantry, its defects must, we should think, 
 be hardly appreciable. Throughout it has the force and 
 dignity of JEschylus, and at times it exhibits the majesty 
 and sweetness of Sophocles. Had Milton flourished in 
 ancient Attica, he had surely ranked with these mighty 
 poets, milder and sweeter than the former, grander and 
 more elevated than the latter. Yet Johnson says, after 
 some pedantic criticism about the want of a Middle 
 founded on the Aristotelian rules, " this is the tragedy 
 which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded!" 
 As to the Middle, it certainly has it fully as much as 
 the Prometheus, and as several others of the dramas of 
 Greece ; and, in fact, the criticism amounts to this, that 
 Milton should not have chosen that subject, for no human 
 genius could have made more of it than he has done. 
 
 As Milton adhered closely to the ancient models in this 
 
SAMSON AGONTSTES. 325 
 
 piece, the versification is of course of a subdued charac- 
 ter, and devoid of the brilliant poetry of the Paradise 
 Lost. But it is correct and chaste, dignified and solemn. ^ 
 The characters are well . sustained, — that of the hero in 
 particular; the occasional employment of familiar lan- 
 guage, which offended Johnson, is common to him with 
 the Grecian dramatists. The lyric portion, which is mo- 
 nostrophic, instead of being in strophe, antistrophe, and 
 epode, and which only rimes capriciously, has given 
 most offence to critics. Johnson, as might be expected, 
 says that it is " often so harsh and dissonant as scarce 
 to preserve, whether the lines end with or without rimes, 
 any appearance of metrical regularity." Cumberland 
 says, that "in some places it is no measure at all, or such 
 at least as the ear will not patiently endure, nor which 
 any recitation can make harmonious ;" and Hallam, that 
 the metre itself " is infelicitous, the lines being frequently 
 of a number of syllables not recognized in the usage of 
 English poetry, and destitute of rhythmical measure, falls 
 into prose." Others have expressed themselves in a si- 
 milar manner. 
 
 Now here are three critics, none perhaps remarkable/ 
 for a poetic ear, accusing a poet, who had an ear for 
 music and- for verse of the utmost delicacy, of writing 
 under the name of lyric poetry lines utterly devoid of 
 melody. Surely then the suspicion must arise that this 
 is but a part of the character of the ordinary English 
 mind, which does not, for example, receive the same en- 
 joyment from the high Italian schools of painting, as from 
 the tamer and more familiar schools of Elanders and 
 Holland. The presumption must be that the fault is in 
 the reader, not in the poet. Eor our own part we freely 
 own, that we are so convinced that a poet of Milton's 
 
326 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 order could not write inharmoniously, that wherever we 
 seem to detect a want of melody, we feel quite convinced 
 that the fault must be in ourselves ; and, on further consi- 
 deration, we have always found it to be the case. 
 
 We will now examine the lines of the lyric parts which 
 seem most likely to have offended the ear of those nice 
 critics ; premising, in opposition to Hallam, that he uses 
 no " number of syllables not recognized in the usage of 
 Enghsh poetry," for his lines are all of from two to six 
 feet, — all measures in use. We have shown above* that, 
 in lines of three and four feet, the first foot may be 
 monosyllabic ; and we shall show, when treating of the 
 verse of Paradise Lost, that English poetry admitted ana- 
 paests among its iambs. We will further observe, that 
 it seems to have been the poet's intention, that the lyric 
 parts should be read in a grave, solemn, measured tone : — 
 
 Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse. 81. 
 
 By privilege of death and burial. 104. 
 
 Let us not break in upon him. 116. 
 
 As one past hope, abandoned. 
 
 And by' himself given over. 120. 
 
 That heroic, that renowned 
 
 Irresistible Samson ? whom unarmed. 125. 
 
 Chalibean tempered steel, and frock of mail 
 
 A'damantean proof. 133. 
 
 Prison within prison. 153. 
 
 But the heart of the fool. 298. 
 
 Oh'! that torments should not be confi'ned. 606. t 
 
 That thou toward him with hand so various. 
 
 Or might I say contrariotis. 668. 
 
 Like a stately ship. 714. 
 
 * See above, page 260. 
 
 t The Oh ! in this verse, and in v. 1267, is like the <^ei) of the Greek 
 drama, which did not count in the iambic line. 
 
SAMSON AGONISTES. 327 
 
 O'h ! how comely it is and how reviving 
 
 To the spirits of just men long oppressed. 1268. 
 
 Puts invincible might. 1271. 
 
 He all their ammunition. 1277. 
 
 With winged expedition. 1283. 
 
 Labouring thy mind. 1298. 
 
 O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious. 1660. 
 
 To Is'rael, and now liest victorious. 1663. 
 
 A'nd with blindness internal struck. 1686.* 
 
 We may here perhaps without impropriety offer a few- 
 remarks on the subject of reading poetry, as we are con- 
 fident that most of the complaints of want of harmony 
 which have been made against Milton, and other great 
 poets, have their origin in want of skill in the reader. f 
 
 The power of reading well, like that of singing well, 
 is the gift of nature, and cannot therefore be commu- 
 nicated by instruction. Like singing, however, it may 
 be greatly improved by diligent culture, and it is there- 
 fore much to be regretted that it should be so generally 
 neglected in our systems of education. There are not 
 many persons who might not be taught to read prose 
 tolerably well, and even the verse of Pope and his school, 
 without chanting, or singsong as it is called, f With 
 
 * There may possibly have been a transposition, and the liae have 
 been — 
 
 And with internal blindness struck, 
 
 but there would be a loss of energy. 
 
 t Moore (Diary, April 14, 1819) tells us that himself and Lord Lans- 
 downe found Chaucer "unreadable." The reason was, they did not 
 know how to read him. 
 
 X We quote the following remarks of one who certainly had a musical 
 ear, and both sang and read with feeling and expression : — 
 
 " Some discussion with respect to Byron's method of repeating poetry, 
 which I professed my strong dislike of. Observe in general that it is 
 the men who have the worst ear for music that sing out poetry in this 
 manner, having no nice perception of the difference there ought to be 
 
328 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 Milton however, and poets of a higher order, whose verses 
 are of varied melody, the case is different, and here we 
 doubt if any but the born reader will ever attain to com- 
 plete success. Still improvement may be made, and the 
 reading become tolerable. 
 
 The following observations may not prove useless : — 
 It is impossible in any language whatsoever to pro- 
 nounce two consecutive syllables without placing an ac- 
 cent, that is elevating the tone, on one of them, form- 
 ing thus an iamb or a trochee. We shall therefore find 
 that consecutive dactyls or anapaests, considered with re- 
 gard to accent, really form a series of these feet, ex, gr. 
 
 A^t the close of the day when the hamlet is stiU. 
 
 Words of more than two syllables have always more than 
 one accent, of which the one is strong, the other (or others) 
 weak, as in regular, transitory. These sometimes form 
 the foot named choriamb, as in tergiversation. A final 
 syllable, as in this word, may either stand alone, or go to 
 the formation of a new foot, with the initial syllable of 
 the following word. 
 
 A good reader will never attempt to pronounce more 
 than two of these feet, or two with a syllable, at a breath. 
 Hence perhaps it was that the ancient Greeks termed 
 their iambic and trochaic verses dimeters, trimeters, te- 
 trameters, the line naturally dividing itself into two, three, 
 or four portions.* Trimeters, for example, ran thus, — 
 
 between animated reading and chant. This is very much the Harrow 
 style of reading. Hodgson has it; Lord Holland too (though not, I 
 beHeve, a Harrow man), gives in to it considerably. Harness himself, 
 I perceived, had it strongly, and by his own avowal he is without a 
 musical ear, as is Lord Holland to a remarkable degree. Lord Byron, 
 though he loved simple music, had no great organization that way." — 
 T. Moore, Diary, May 4, 1828. 
 
 * In dactylic and anapsestic verse the single foot was regarded as a 
 metre. 
 
SAMSON AGONISTES. 329 
 
 *Q TCKva, I KdSfxov tov iraXat | via Tpo<f>Tj, 
 TtVas TToff ISpas I rdaSe fxoi \ 6od^€T€ ; 
 
 In like manner our five-foot heroic and dramatic verse 
 divides itself into three, or sometimes fom*, portions. Pa- 
 radise Lost commences thus : — 
 
 Of man's | first disobedience || and the fruit 
 Of that I forbidden tree, || whose mortal taste 
 Brought death | into the world, || and all our woe, 
 With loss of Eden, || till | one greater man 
 Eestore us, || and regain | the blissful seat. 
 
 The pause indicated by the double line is called the 
 ccemra^ and is frequently as long as that at the end of 
 the verse ; that by the single line, which is usually much 
 shorter, may be named the semiccesura. The length of 
 the pause at any of these places can only be determined 
 by the taste and judgement of the reader. 
 
 In arms | not worse, || in foresight | much advanced. 
 Where joy | for ever dwells. |1 Hail horrors ! || hail. 
 ISTo wonder, || fallen | such a | pernicious height. 
 Awake, | arise, || or be | for ever fallen. 
 
 are examples of the occurrence of more than one semi- 
 ccesura in a line. 
 
 The usual place of the ccBSura in the four-foot verse is 
 the middle of the line. There is sometimes a semiccesura ^ 
 or even two ; but this last is rare. 
 
 The six-foot verse with which Spenser concludes his 
 stanzas, and which Milton also employs, is, like the 
 Trench Alexandrine, a compound of two three-foot lines, 
 and should therefore, like that verse, have the caesura 
 exactly in the middle, as in — 
 
 To wanton | with the sun, || her lusty | paramour. 
 Should look so near || upon | her foul | deformities. 
 
330 WRITINGS OF MILTON VERSE. 
 
 This last line, it will be seen, is not quite accurate. But 
 neither Spenser nor Milton adhered strictly to this rule, 
 as the following examples will show. 
 
 She strikes | a universal | peace || through sea and land, 
 While birds of calm | sit brooding || on | the charmed wave. 
 
 In all cases the voice should be somewhat elevated at the 
 end of the third foot. 
 
 We will take this opportunity of reconsidering a line 
 quoted some pages back from Macbeth. Our present 
 opinion is that the whole passage should stand thus : — 
 
 K I say sooth, I must report they were 
 As cannons overcharged with double cracks 
 * * * * so they 
 
 Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe. 
 
 The poet must have said what it is these cannons do; 
 and there may be more than one line lost. As this scene 
 was probably on the first page of the manuscript, it was 
 peculiarly exposed to injury from friction, dirt, and such 
 like ; and it appears to us that- elsewhere in it, lines or 
 parts of lines have been effaced. In the same way He 
 has been manifestly effaced in the first line of As you 
 Like it. 
 
381 
 
 II. 
 
 PROSE. 
 
 OF KEFOEMATION IN ENGLAND, AND THE CAUSES 
 THAT HITHERTO HAYE HINDEEED IT. 
 
 This, the earliest of Milton's prose works, is addressed 
 to a friend, and divided into two books. He commences 
 by expressing his grief at the great and astonishing cor- 
 ruption of the pure doctrine taught by our Lord and his 
 disciples, and then draws a picture of the sensuous ma- 
 terial system which had usurped its place. He dwells on 
 the pomp of vestments, " fetched from Aaron's old ward- 
 robe or the Elamen's vestry," on baptism's being made 
 a kind of exorcism, and on "that feast of free grace and 
 adoption, to which Christ invited his disciples to sit as 
 brethren and coheirs of the happy covenant," becoming 
 " the subject of horror and gloating adoration, pageanted 
 about like a dreadful idol." He then passes to the con- 
 sideration of what he terms " the bright and blissful Re- 
 formation ;" at the thoughts of which, he exclaims, — 
 
 Metbinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the 
 mind of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the re- 
 turning Gospel imhathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. 
 Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty comers where 
 prophane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, 
 divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten 
 
332 WRITINGS OF MILTON — PROSE. 
 
 tongues, the princes and cities trooping to the new-erected ban- 
 ner of salvation, the martyrs with the imresistible might of weak- 
 ness shaking the powers of darkness and scorning the fiery rage 
 of the old red dragon. 
 
 He next proceeds to consider how it was that England, 
 which, he says, had in Wickhffe been the first to " set up 
 a standard for the recovery of lost truth, and blow the 
 first evangelic trumpet to the nations," should have fallen 
 from her eminence ; and, while in purity of doctrine we 
 agree with our brethren, yet in discipline " we are no 
 better than a schism from the Reformation." This he 
 ascribes to the holding of the principle, that ordination 
 belongs only to bishops, and to the retention of " sense- 
 less ceremonies." 
 
 In order to prove this, he gives a brief sketch of the 
 progress of the Reformation in England, commencing 
 with Henry VHL, whose only quarrel with the Papacy, 
 he says, was about supremacy; while the bishops, "though 
 they had renounced the Pope, still hugged the popedom, 
 and shared the authority among themselves." In the 
 time of Edward VI. the Reformation was impeded by 
 rebellions, and by quarrels among the peers ; while the 
 bishops "suffered themselves to be the common stales 
 to countenance with their prostituted gravities every 
 politic fetch that was then on foot." He gives as in- 
 stances, Cranmer and Ridley being employed to extort 
 fi:om the young King a toleration for the use of the Mass 
 by his sister Mary ; Latimer's assertion of the truth of 
 the charges against Lord Seymour of Sudley, and Cran- 
 mer and the other bishops joining in the attempt to de- 
 prive the two princesses of their right to the crown.* To 
 
 * On these matters see our History of England, where we shall be 
 found to differ somewhat from Milton's views. 
 
OP REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 333 
 
 the excuse that these men were martyrs, he replies, that 
 this is no proof of their being incapable of error; and 
 he instances the iVrians and Pelagians, "which were slain 
 by the heathen for Christ's sake, yet we take both of 
 these for no true friends of Christ." 
 
 And liere withall I invoke the Immortal Deity, revealer and 
 judge of secrets, that wherever I have in this book plainly and 
 roundly, though worthily and truly, laid open the faults and 
 blemishes of Fathers, martyrs, or Christian emperors, or have 
 otherwise inveighed against error and superstition with vehement 
 expressions, I have done it neither out of malice nor list [incli- 
 nation] to speak evil, nor any vain glory ; but of mere necessity, 
 to vindicate the spotless truth from an ignominious bondage, 
 whose native worth is now become of such a low esteem that 
 she is like to find small credit with us for what she can say, 
 unless she can bring a ticket from Cranmer, Latimer, and Eidley, 
 or prove herself a retainer to Constantine and wear his badge. 
 More tolerable it were for the Church of Grod that all these 
 names were utterly abolished, like the Brazen Serpent, than 
 that men's fond opinion should thus idolize them, andthe hea- 
 venly truth be thus captivated. 
 
 The time of Edward VI., from its unsettled nature, 
 was no time for forming a perfect constitution, and those 
 to whom it was committed had different ends in view. 
 We are not therefore to argue in favour of episcopacy 
 from its being then continued. Episcopacy is to be judged 
 from its effects, and it actually, he thinks, " worsens and 
 slugs the most learned and seeming religious of our 
 ministers." 
 
 But what [for what] do we suffer misshapen and enormous 
 prelatism,* as we do, thus to blanch and varnish her deformities 
 with the fair colours, as before of martyrdom, so now of episco- 
 pacy ? They are not bishops, God and aU good men know they 
 are not, that have filled this land with late confusion and violence, 
 
 * We are to observe that Milton throughout distinguishes prelates 
 from bishops. 
 
334 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 but a tyrannical crew and corporation of impostors, that have 
 blinded the world so long under that name. He that, enabled with 
 gifts from Grod, and the lawful and primitive choice of the Church, 
 assembled in convenient number, faithfully from that time forward 
 feeds his parochial flock, has his coequal and compresbyterial power 
 to ordain ministers and deacons, by public prayer and vote of 
 Christ's congregation, in like sort as he himself was ordained, and 
 is a true apostolic bishop. But when he steps up into the chair 
 of pontifical pride, and changes a moderate and exemplary house, 
 for a misgoverned and haughty palace, spiritual dignity for carnal 
 precedence, and secular high office and employment for the high 
 negociations of his heavenly embassage, then he degrades, then he 
 unbishops himself. He that makes him a bishop, makes him no 
 bishop. 
 
 He gives as an instance St. Martin, who complained 
 to Sulpitius Severus, that since he had been a bishop, 
 he felt a sensible decay of the gifts and graces that God 
 had previously given him, though Sulpitius says there 
 was no change in his manners or habits. 
 
 The same impediments, he proceeds to say, prevailed 
 in Elizabeth's reign, and the crude constitutions made 
 in the time of Edward were established for good and 
 all, though they had not satisfied even those who made 
 them ; and their impugners were branded with the name 
 of Puritans and persecuted, while the Queen was made 
 to believe that she would endanger her prerogative if 
 she consented to do away with bishops. He then comes 
 to his own times, and he divides the hinderers of Refor- 
 mation into three classes, Antiquitarians (" for so I had 
 rather call them than Antiquaries, whose labours are 
 useful and laudable "), Libertines, and Politicians. 
 
 In answer to the first, he undertakes to show that, if 
 " they will conform our bishops to the purer times, they 
 must mew their feathers and their pounces,"* and make 
 
 * Mew is the same as moult ; pounce is scent or perfume. 
 
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 335 
 
 but curtailed bishops of them;" secondly, that "those 
 purer times were corrupt, and their books corrupted soon 
 after;" thirdly, that the best writers of those times dis- 
 claim all authority and send men to the Scriptures. 
 
 He first shows, by the testimony of Ignatius, that bi- 
 shops must be elected by the hands of the whole Church ; 
 and, from him and Camden, that previous to the year 
 268 bishops had no fixed dioceses, but exercised their 
 authority wherever they came. He further proves from 
 Cyprian, that l)ishops could not lawfully be appointed 
 without the consent of the people, and shows from an 
 epistle of the Council of Nicaga, and the example of St. 
 Martin, that such was the practice down to the end of 
 the fourth century, and apparently to the end of the 
 ninth. From Ignatius and Cyprian he shows, that bi- 
 shops were only the first among their compresbyters, and 
 could do nothing without their counsel and consent; 
 a glimpse of which, he says, remains at Rome, where 
 the Pope " performeth all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as in 
 consistory among his cardinals, which were originally 
 but the parish-priests of Rome." 
 
 Thus then did the spirit of unity and meekness inspire and ani- 
 mate every joint and sinew of the mystical body. But now the 
 gravest and worthiest minister, a true bishop of his fold, shall be 
 reviled and ruffled by an insulting and only canon-wise prelate, as 
 if he were some slight paltry companion [fellow] ; and the people 
 of God, redeemed and washed with Christ's blood, and dignified 
 with so many glorious titles of Saints and Sons in the Gospel, are 
 now no better respected than impure Ethnics and lay dogs. Stones 
 and pillars and crucifixes have now the honour and the alms due 
 to Christ's living members ; the table of communion, now become 
 a table of separation, stands like an exalted platform upon the 
 brow of the quire, fortified with bulwarjk and barricade to keep 
 ofi" the profane touch of the laics ; while the obscene and surfeited 
 priest scruples not to paw and mammoc the sacramental bread as 
 
336 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 familiarly as his tavern-biscuit. And thus the people, vilified and 
 rejected by them, give over the earnest study of virtue and godli- 
 ness, as a thing of greater purity than they need, and the search 
 of divine knowledge as a mystery too high for their capacities, 
 and only for churchmen to meddle with, — which is what the pre- 
 lates desire, that, when they have brought us back to Popish blind- 
 ness, we might commit to their dispose the whole management of 
 our salvation ; for they think it was never fair world with them 
 since that time. But he that will mould a modern bishop into a 
 primitive, must yield him to be elected by the popular voice, un- 
 diocesed, unreverenced, unlorded, and leave him nothing but bro- 
 therly equality, matchless temperance, frequent fasting, incessant 
 prayer and preaching, continual watchings and labours in his mi- 
 nistry, — which, what a rich booty it would be, what a plump en- 
 dowment to the many-benefice-gaping mouth of a prelate, what 
 a relish it would give to his canary- sucking and swan-eating pa- 
 late, let old bishop Mountain judge for me.* 
 
 His second assertion, that those purer times themselves 
 were corrupt, is proved by the testimony of Ignatius and 
 Eusebius. The writings of those times also are full of 
 errors, for "who," says he, " is ignorant of the foul errors, 
 the ridiculous wrestings of Scripture, the heresies, the va- 
 nities thick-sown through the volumes of Justin Martyr, 
 Clemens, Origen, TertuUian, and others of the eldest 
 time?" Further, "who knows not how many super- 
 stitious works are ingrafFed into the legitimate writings 
 of the Fathers ? and of those books that pass for authen- 
 tic, who knows what hath been tampered withal, what 
 hath been rased out, what hath been inserted ? " He then 
 comes to Constantine, the great object of the praise of 
 the clergy, and exposes his cruelty, his Arianism, and his 
 persecution of the " faithful and invincible " Athanasius, 
 and the superstition of himself and his mother respect- 
 
 * What precedes is directed against the Laudian innovations. Bi- 
 shop Mountain, who it seems was a gourmand, was an active promoter 
 of them. 
 
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 337 
 
 ing the true cross, and asks, " How should then the dim 
 taper of this Emperor's age, that had such need of snuff- 
 ing, extend any beam to our times, wherewith we might 
 hope to be better lighted than by those luminaries which 
 God hath set up to shine to us far. nearer hand?" He 
 enumerates the corruptions introduced into the Church 
 by and through this Prince, whose successors proved to 
 be the one " a flat Arian," the other an apostate, and 
 there his race ended. The Church then, according to the 
 testimony of St. Martin and Sulpitius, went on growing 
 continually worse and worse. He quotes passages from 
 Dante, Petrarca, and Ariosto, in proof of its being " a re- 
 ceived opinion, even among men professing the Romish 
 faith, that Constantine marred all in the Church." When 
 therefore " the prelates cry out, Let the Church be re- 
 formed according to Constantine, it should sound to a 
 judicious ear no otherwise than if they should say, Make 
 us rich, make us lofty, make us lawless [free from law]. 
 Por if any under him were not so, thanks to those an- 
 cient remains of integrity which were not yet quite worn 
 out, and not to his government." 
 
 That the most ancient and best of the Fathers dis- 
 claimed all authority, is proved by the testimony of Cy- 
 prian, Lactantius, and Austin ; and that they referred the 
 decision of all controversy to the Scriptures is shown 
 briefly from Ignatius and copiously from Cyprian ; he 
 also quotes a passage to the same effect from Basil. To 
 the objections that " the Scriptures are difficult to be 
 understood, and therefore require the explanation of the 
 Fathers," he replies, " It is true there be some books, 
 and especially some places in these books, that remain 
 clouded, yet ever that which is most necessary to be 
 known is most easy, and that which is most difficult so 
 
338 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 far expounds itself ever, as to tell us how little it imports 
 our saving knowledge/' etc. 
 
 I will not run into a paroxysm of citations again in tliis point, 
 only instance Athanasius in his forementioned first page. " The 
 knowledge of truth," saith he, " wants no human lore, as being 
 evident in itself and by the preaching of Christ now opens brighter 
 than the sun." If these doctors, who had scarce half the light 
 that we enjoy, who all, except two or three, were ignorant of the 
 Hebrew tongue, and many of the Greek, blundering upon the 
 dangerous and suspectful translations of the apostate Aquila, the 
 heretical Theodotion, the judaized Symmachus, the erroneous Ori- 
 gen — if these could yet find the Bible so easy, why should we 
 doubt, that have all the helps of learning and faithful industry 
 that man in this life can look for, and the assistance of Grod as 
 near now to us as ever ? But let the Scriptures be hard — are they 
 more hard, more crabbed, more abstruse than the Fathers ? He 
 that cannot understand the sober, plain, and unaffected style of 
 the Scriptures, will be ten times more puzzled with the knotty 
 Africanisms,* the pampered metaphors, the intricate and involved 
 sentences of the Eathers, beside the fantastic and declamatory 
 flashes, the cross-jingling periods, which cannot but disturb and 
 come thwart a settled devotion, worse than the din of bells and 
 rattles. 
 
 Now, sir, for the love of holy reformation, what can be said 
 more against these importunate clients of Antiquity than she her- 
 self their patroness hath said ? "Whether, think ye, would she 
 approve still to dote upon immeasurable, innumerable, and there- 
 fore unnecessary and unmerciful volumes, choosing rather to err 
 with the specious name of the Fathers, or to take a sound truth 
 at the hand of a plain upright man, that all his days hath been 
 diligently reading the Holy Scriptures and thereto imploring Grod's 
 grace, while the admirers of antiquity have been beating their 
 brains about their Ambones, their Diptychs, and Meniaias ? Now 
 he that cannot tell of Stations and Indictions, nor has wasted 
 his precious hours in the endless conferring of Councils and Con- 
 claves that demolish one another— although I know many of those 
 
 * Alluding to Tertullian, Cyprian, and Austin, who were all natives 
 of Africa. 
 
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND, 339 
 
 that pretend to be great rabbies in these studies, have scarce sa- 
 luted them from the strings * and the title-page, or, to give them 
 more, have been but the ferrets and mousehuntsf of an index — 
 yet what pastor or minister, how learned, religious, or discreet so- 
 ever, does not now bring both his cheeks full-blown with Oecume- 
 nical and Synodical shall be counted a lank, shallow and insufficient 
 man, yea a dunce, and not worthy to speak about church-discipline. 
 But I trust they for whom God hath reserved the honour of re- 
 forming this church will easily perceive their adversaries' drift in 
 thus calling for Antiquity. They fear the plain field of the Scrip- 
 tures ; the chase is too hot ; they seek the dark, the bushy, the 
 tangled forest ; they would imboskrj they feel themselves struck 
 in the transparent streams of divine truth ; they would plunge 
 and tumble and think to lie hid in the foul weeds and muddy 
 waters, where no plummet can reach the bottom. But let them 
 beat themselves like whales, and spend their oil till they be 
 dragged ashore. Though wherefore should the ministers give 
 them so much line for shifts and delays ? Wherefore should they 
 not urge only the Gospel § and hold it ever in their faces, like a 
 mirror of diamond, till it dazzle and pierce their misty eyeballs, 
 maintaining it the honour of its absolute sufficiency and supre- 
 macy inviolable ? For if the Scripture be for reformation and 
 Antiqmty to boot, it is but an advantage to the dozen ; it is no 
 winning cast : and though Antiquity be against it, while the Scrip- 
 tures be for it, the cause is as good as ought to be wished, Anti- 
 quity itself sitting judge. 
 
 As to the Libertines, no form of discipline would sa- 
 tisfy them. It is only necessary to discover these men ; 
 ''for reason they have none, but lust and licentiousness, 
 and therefore answer can have none." The first book 
 concludes here, and the second is devoted to replying to 
 the Politicians. 
 
 * There were frequently at that time strings attached to the edges 
 of the covers of books, to close them. 
 
 t The mousehunt is an animal of the weasel genus. 
 
 X i. e, shelter in the wood, imboscare It. He then changes the me- 
 taphor to fishing. This change of metaphor is frequent in Horace. 
 
 § *. e. the Gospel alone. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 Having briefly noticed wliat the objects of tbe true 
 statesman should be, he adds by way of contrast, " This 
 is the masterpiece of a modern poUtician, how to quaUfy 
 and mould the sufferance and subjection of the people to 
 the length of that foot that is to tread on their necks; 
 how rapine may serve itself with the fair and honourable 
 pretence of public good; how the puny* law may be 
 brought under the wardship and control of lust and 
 will: in which attempt if they fall short, then must a 
 superficial colour of reputation by all means, direct or 
 indirect, be gotten to wash over the unsightly bruise of 
 honour." 
 
 Men of this sort allege, — " 1. That the church-go- 
 vernment must be conformable to the civil polity ; next, 
 that no form of church-government is agreeable to mon- 
 archy but that of bishops.'' The first of these positions 
 he refutes, by showing that the church-government of 
 the Jews never varied during all the numerous changes 
 of that of the state. How much more then must that 
 be the case now, when the Gospel "forbids churchmen to 
 intermeddle with worldly employments." 
 
 Seeing that the churchman's office is only to teach men the 
 Christian faith, to exhort all, to encourage the good, to admonish 
 the bad (privately the less offender, publicly the scandalous and 
 stubborn), to censure and separate from the communion of Christ's 
 flock the contagious and incorrigible, to receive with joy and fa- 
 therly compassion the penitent. All this must be done ; and more 
 than this is beyond any church-authority. 
 
 In refutation of the second position, he undertakes to 
 prove that " episcopacy, with that authority which it 
 challenges in England, is not only not agreeable, but 
 tending to the destruction of monarchy." He then goes 
 
 * PuisnS, i. e. under age. 
 
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 341 
 
 through the history of the Church, showing its gradual 
 encroachments on the temporal power, and coming to 
 his own times, asserts that the bishops weakened the 
 crown of England by alienating the affections of the peo- 
 ple, by forcing numbers to seek a refuge from their ty- 
 ranny in the wilds of America, by disgusting its natural 
 allies the Protestants of the Continent, as the prelates "ac- 
 count them no better than a sort* of sacrilegious and 
 puritanical rebels, preferring the Spaniard, our deadly 
 enemy, before them, and set all' orthodox writers at 
 nought in comparison of the Jesuits, who" are indeed the 
 only corruptors of youth and good learning. And I have 
 heard many wise and learned men in Italy say as much." 
 But this is only a small part of what the prelates have 
 done. "By their seditious practices they have endan- 
 gered to lose the king one third of his main stock. What 
 have they not done to banish him from his own native 
 country" [Scotland] ? Then they seek to render the peo- 
 ple effeminate, by instigating them by public edict and 
 pushing them forward " to gaming, jigging, wassailing, 
 and mixed dancing "f on the day set apart for medita- 
 tion and prayer. In this he compares them with Balaam. 
 They also diminish the wealth of the kingdom by their 
 ceremonies and their courts ; for the former consume it 
 in the erection of " temples beautified exquisitely to out- 
 vie the Papists," and providing of " images, pictures, rich 
 copes, gorgeous altar-cloths;" while the latter absorb still 
 greater sums of money in " sordid fees," in direct oppo- 
 sition to the spirit of the Gospel. Further, they seek to 
 degrade the people by preaching the divine right of kings 
 
 * i. e. a set, a crew. 
 
 t Alluding to the Book of Sports. Mixed dancing is the dancing of 
 the two sexes together. 
 
342 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 and the duty of non-resistance, while at the same time all 
 their efforts are directed to setting the episcopate above 
 the monarchy ; for " Is not the chief of them [Laud] ac- 
 cused out of his own book and his late canons, to affect 
 a certain unquestionable Patriarchate independent and 
 unsubordinate to the Crown?" Alluding then to their 
 having caused the war with Scotland, he bursts into the 
 following eloquent strain. 
 
 But ever blessed be He and ever glorified that from his high 
 watch-tower in the heavens, discerning the crooked ways of per- 
 verse and cruel men, hath hitherto maimed and infatuated all their 
 damnable inventions, and deluded their great wizards with a de- 
 lusion fit for fools and children ! Had Grod been so minded, he 
 could have sent a spirit of mutiny amongst us, as he did between 
 Abimelech and the Sechemites, to have made our funerals and 
 slain heaps more in number than the miserable surviving' remnant. 
 But he, when we least deserved, sent out a gentle gale and mes- 
 sage of peace from the wings of those his Cherubims that fan his 
 mercy-seat. Nor shall the wisdom, the moderation, the Christian 
 piety, the constancy of our nobility and commons of England be 
 ever forgotten, whose calm and temperate connivance could sit 
 still and smile out the stormy bluster of men more audacious and 
 precipitant than of solid and deep reach, until their own fury had 
 run itself out of breath, assailing by rash and heady approaches 
 the impregnable situation [site] of our liberty and safety, that 
 laughed such weak enginery to scorn, such poor drifts to make a 
 national war of a surplice-brabble, a tippet-scuffle,* and engage the 
 untainted honour of English knighthood to unfurl the streaming 
 red-cross, or to rear the horrid standard of those fatal guly dra- 
 gons for so unworthy a purpose as to force upon their fellow-sub- 
 jects that which themselves are weary of, the skeleton of a mass- 
 book. Nor must the patience, the fortitude, the firm obedience 
 of the nobles and people of Scotland, striving against manifold 
 provocations, nor must their sincere and moderate proceedings 
 hitherto be unremembered, to the shameful conviction of their 
 detractors. 
 
 Gro on both, hand in hand, O nations, never to be disunited ; be 
 
 * The attempt to force a Liturgy on Scotland. 
 
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 343 
 
 the praise and the heroic song of all posterity. Merit this, but 
 seek only virtue, not to extend your limits — for what needs to win 
 a fading triumphant laurel out of the tears of wretched men ? 
 — but to settle the pure worship of Grod in his church, and justice 
 in the state. Then shaU the hardest difficulties smooth out them- 
 selves before ye ; envy shall sink to Hell,* craft and malice be con- 
 founded, whether it be homebred mischief or outlandish cunning : 
 yea, other nations will then covet to serve ye ; for lordship and 
 victory are but the pages of justice and virtue. Commit securely 
 to true wisdom the vanquishing and uncasing of craft and sub- 
 tlety, which are but her two runagates.f Join your invincible 
 might to do worthy and godlike deeds ; and then he that seeks to 
 break your union — a cleaving curse be his inheritance to all gene- 
 rations. 
 
 He then urges speed in carrying out the necessary re- 
 formation, and having answered the objections against 
 haste, and going into extremes, etc., he concludes the 
 treatise with the following address to the Deity : — 
 
 Thou therefore that sittest in light and glory unapproachable, 
 Parent of angels and men! next, thee I implore, omnipotent 
 King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature thou didst 
 assume, ineffable and everlasting Love ! and thou the third sub- 
 sistence of divine infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and solace 
 of created things ! one tripersonal Godhead ! look upon this thy 
 poor and almost spent and expiring Church ; leave her not thus 
 a prey to these importunate wolves, that wait and think long till 
 they devour thy tender flock, these wild boars that have broke 
 into thy vineyard and left the prints of their polluting hoofs on 
 the souls of thy servants. Oh ! let them not bring about their 
 damned designs J that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless 
 pit, expecting the watchword to open and let out those dreadful 
 locusts and scorpions, to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of in- 
 fernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of thy 
 
 * "Invidia infelix Furias amnemque severum 
 Cocyti metuet," etc. — Virg. Geor. iii. 37. 
 t i. e. runaway servants. Uncasing refers to the stripping servants 
 of their Hveriea. 
 X i. e. bring back Popery and ecclesiastic domination. 
 
344 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear 
 the bird of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted 
 state of this our shaken monarchy, that now lies labouring under 
 her throes, and struggling against the grudges of more dreadful 
 calamities. 
 
 O thou that, after the impetuous rage of five bloody inunda- 
 tions, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking the land 
 in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless revolution of our 
 swift and thick-coming sorrows ; when we were quite breathless, 
 of thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of covenant with 
 us ; and having first well-nigh freed us from Antichristian thral- 
 dom,* didst build up this Britannic empire to a glorious and en- 
 viable height, with all her daughter^islands about her — stay [main- 
 tain] us in this felicity ; let not the obstinacy of our half-obedience 
 and will-worship bring forth that viper of sedition that for these 
 fourscore years hath been breeding to eat through the entrails of 
 our peace, but let her cast her abortive spawn without the danger 
 of this travailing realm ; that we may still remember in our solemn 
 thanksgivings how for us the Northern Ocean, even to the frozen 
 Thule, was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish 
 Armada, and the very maw of Hell ransacked and made to give up 
 her concealed destruction ere she could vent it in that horrible 
 and damned blast. f 
 
 Oh ! how much more glorious will those former deliverances 
 appear, when we shall know them not only to have saved us from 
 greatest miseries past, but to have reserved us for greater happi- 
 ness to come ! Hitherto thou hast but freed us, and that not 
 fuUy, from the unjust and tyrannous claim of thy foes — now unite 
 us entirely and appropriate us to thyself, tie us everlastingly in 
 willing homage to the prerogative of thy eternal throne. 
 
 And now we know, O thou our most certain hope and defence, 
 that thine enemies have been consulting all the sorcerers of the 
 Great Whore, and have joined their plots with that sad inteUi- 
 gencing tyrant J that mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, 
 and Hes thirsting to revenge his naval ruins that have larded our 
 
 * He would seem to aUude to the invasions of England by the Ko- 
 mans, Saxons, Danes (twice), and Normans, and the War of the E-oses, 
 followed by the partial reformation under Henry VIII. 
 
 t i. e. the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
 J The King of Spain. Sad is grave, serious. 
 
OF REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 345 
 
 seas. But let them all take counsel together, and let it come to 
 nought ; let them decree and thou cancel it ; let them gather 
 themselves and be scattered ; let them embattle themselves and 
 be broken ; let them embattle and be broken, for thou art with us. 
 
 Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one 
 may perhaps be heard offering at high strains, in new and lofty 
 measure to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and marvellous 
 judgements in this land throughout all ages ;* whereby this great 
 and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and con- 
 tinual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from 
 her the rags of her whole vices, may press on hard to that high 
 and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most 
 Christian people at that day, when thou, the eternal and shortly- 
 expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several king- 
 doms of the world, and distributing national honours and rewards 
 to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all 
 earthly tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy 
 through heaven and earth ; where they undoubtedly 'that, by their 
 labours, counsels and prayers, have been earnest for the common 
 good of religion and their country, shall receive, above the in- 
 ferior orders of the blessed, the regal additions of principalities, 
 legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in superemi- 
 nence of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble 
 circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss 
 in overmeasure for ever.f 
 
 But they contrary, that, by the impairing and diminution of 
 the true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, 
 aspire to high dignity, rule, and promotion here, after a shameful 
 end in this life — which Grod grant them ! — shall be thrown down 
 eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where, under 
 the despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other 
 damned, — that, in the anguish of their torture, shall have no other 
 ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as 
 their slaves and negroes, — they shall remain in that plight for ever, 
 the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and 
 downtrodden vassals of perdition, 
 
 * Alluding to his meditated poem on a British theme, 
 t Here we have Milton's ideas, at that time, of the Millennium or 
 reign of Christ. 
 
346 WRITINGS OF MILTON — PROSE. 
 
 OF PEELATICAL EPISCOPACY. 
 
 Episcopacy, he observes, is either of divine or of hu- 
 man constitution. If of the latter, it may be changed 
 Hke everything else ; if asserted to be of the former, the 
 proofs must be fetched from Scripture alone, as it alone 
 is of divine authority. But in the New Testament no dif- 
 ference whatever is made between Bishop and Presbyter. 
 
 Yet, to verify that whicli St. Paul foretold of succeeding times, 
 when men began to have itching ears, then, not contented with 
 the plentiful and wholesome fountains of the Grospel, they began 
 after their own lusts to heap to themselves teachers and — as if 
 the Divine Scripture wanted a supplement, and were to be eked 
 out — they cannot think any doubt resolved, and any doctrine con- 
 firmed, unless they run to that indigested heap and fry of authors 
 which they call Antiquity. Whatsoever Time or the heedless hand 
 of blind Chance huth drawn down in her huge drag-net, whether 
 jish or sea-weeds, shells or shrubs, unpicJced, unchosen, these are the 
 Fathers. 
 
 Milton then examines the testimony of the Pathers, as 
 produced by Usher and Hall. He first shows that that 
 of Leontius, bishop of Magnesia, is of no value what- 
 ever ; on which occasion he speaks very siightingly of the 
 ancient Councils, hinting, that the members of them may 
 have been no better than those of modern Convocations ; 
 but that at all events their canons, acts, etc. have often 
 been falsified. He quotes Eusebius to show, that in 
 his time it was quite a matter of uncertainty who were 
 left bishops of the churches by the Apostles; and from 
 Justin Martyr he shows that the term UpoeaTays might 
 be used of any presbyter. Of the Epistles that go under 
 the name of Ignatius, five, he says, are certainly spuri- 
 ous, and the remainder are so largely interpolated that 
 it is impossible to say what is genuine. As to Irenseus, 
 
OF PRELATICAL EPISCOPACY. 847 
 
 who is brought to prove that Polycarp was bishop of 
 Smyrna, because he had both seen and heard him, it is 
 replied that he was only a boy at the time, and therefore 
 hardly competent to judge. He was besides, as is shown 
 by several instances — such as his putting implicit faith 
 in the assertions of Papias — a man of such a shallow 
 wit, that his judgement and critical skill are of little 
 account. There is no proof that Tertullian made any 
 distinction between Bishop and Presbyter. 
 
 But suppose lie had made an imparity where none was origi- 
 nally, should he move us that goes about to prove an imparity be- 
 tween Grod the Father and Grod the Son ? as these words import 
 in his book against Praxeas : " The Father is the whole substance, 
 but the Son a derivation and portion of the whole, as he himself 
 professes, ' Because the Father is greater than me.'" Believe him 
 now for a faithful relator of tradition, whom you see such an un- 
 faithful expounder of the Scripture. 
 
 He that thinks it the part of a weU-learned man to have read 
 diligently the ancient stories of the Church, and to be no stranger 
 to the volumes of the Fathers, shall have all judicious men 
 consenting with him. Not hereby to control and newfangle the 
 Scripture, Grod forbid ! but to mark how corruption and apostasy 
 crept in by degrees, and to gather up wherever we find: the re- 
 maining sparks of original truth wherewith to stop the mouths of 
 our adversaries, and to bridle them with their own curb, who wil- 
 lingly pass by that which is orthodoxical in them, and studiously 
 cidl out that which is commentitious and best for their turns, not 
 weighing the Fathers in the balance of Scripture, but Scripture 
 in the balance of the Fathers. If we therefore, making first the 
 Gospel our rule and oracle, shall take the good which we light on 
 in the Fathers, and set it to oppose the evil which other men seek 
 from them, in this way of skirmish we shall easily master all su- 
 perstition and false doctrine. But if we turn this our discreet and 
 wary usage of them into a blind devotion toward them and what- 
 soever we find written in them, we both forsake our own grounds 
 and reasons which led us at first to part from Bome, — that is to 
 hold to the Scriptures against all Antiquity ; we remove our cause 
 into our adversaries' own court, and take up there those cast prin- 
 
348 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 ciples, which will soon cause us to solder up with them again ; in- 
 asmuch as, believing Antiquity for itself in any one point, we bring 
 an engagement upon ourselves of assenting to all that it charges 
 upon us. 
 
 THE EEASOlSr OF CHUECH GOYEENMENT UEGED 
 AGAINST PEELATY. 
 
 In the first book of this treatise Milton undertakes 
 to prove that church-government is not a matter of in- 
 difference, but is set down in Scripture. He then argues 
 at length against the position of Bishop Andrews and 
 Archbishop Usher, that it is to be patterned by the Levi- 
 tical Law, and finally shows that " Prelaty was not set 
 up for prevention of schism, as is pretended ; or that, if 
 it were, it performs not what it was first set up for, but 
 quite the contrary." 
 
 In the Introduction to the second book he gives the 
 following most interesting justification of his own con- 
 duct in this controversy. 
 
 For me, I have determined to lay up as the best treasure and 
 solace of a good old-age — if God vouchsafe it me — the honest 
 liberty of free speech from my youth, where I shall think it avail- 
 able in so dear a concernment as the Church's good. For if I be, 
 either by disposition or whatever cause, too inquisitive or sus- 
 picious of myself and miae own doings, who can help it ? But 
 this I foresee, that should the Church be brought under heavy 
 oppression, and God have given me ability the while to reason 
 against that man that should be the author of so foul a deed ; or 
 should she, by blessing from above on the industry and courage 
 of faithful men, change this her distracted estate into better days, 
 without the least furtherance or contribution of those few talents 
 which God at that present had lent me, I foresee what stories I 
 should hear within myself, all my life after, of discourage and 
 reproach : " Timorous and ungrateful, the Church of God is now 
 again at the foot of her insulting enemies, and thou bewailest. 
 What matters it for thee or they bewailing ? When time was, 
 
REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 349 
 
 thou couldst not find a syllable of all that thou hast read or stu- 
 died to utter in her behalf. Yet ease and leisure was given thee 
 for thy retired thoughts, out of the sweat of other men.* Thou 
 hast the diligence, the parts, the language of a man, if a vain sub- 
 ject were to be adorned or beautified ;t but when the cause of 
 Grod and his Church was to be pleaded, — for which purpose that 
 tongue was given thee which thou hast, — Grod listened if he could 
 hear thy voice among his zealous servants, but thou wast dumb as a 
 beast. From henceforth be that which thine own brutish silence 
 hath made thee." Or else I should have heard on the other ear : 
 " Slothful and ever to be set light by, the Church hath now over- 
 come her late distresses, after the unwearied labours of many her 
 true servants that stood up in her defence. Thou also wouldst 
 take upon thee to share amongst them of their joy. But where- 
 fore thou ? "Where canst thou show any word or deed of thine 
 which might have hastened her peace ? Whatever thou dost now 
 talk or write or look is the alms of other men's active prudence 
 and zeal. Dare not now to say or do anything better than thy 
 former sloth and infancy ;X or, if thou darest, thou dost impudently 
 to make a thrifty purchase of boldness to thyself, out of the pain- 
 ful merits of other men. What before was thy sin is now thy 
 duty, to be abject and worthless." 
 
 These and such-like lessons as these I know would have been 
 my matins duly and my even- song. But now by this little dili- 
 gence mark what a privilege I have gained with good men and 
 saints to claim my right of lamenting the tribulations of the 
 Church, if she should suffer, while others, that have ventured no- 
 thing for her sake, have not the honour to be admitted mourners. 
 But if she lift up her drooping head and prosper, among those 
 that have something more than wished her welfare, I have my 
 charter and freehold of rejoicing to me and my heirs. Concern- 
 ing therefore this wayward subject against prelaty — the touching 
 whereof is so distasteful and disquietous to a number of men — 
 as by what hath been said I may deserve of charitable readers to 
 be credited, that neither envy nor gall hath entered me upon this 
 controversy, but the enforcement of conscience only, and a pre- 
 
 * The fortune made by his father. This shows that Milton was in 
 independent circumstances. 
 
 t Alluding probably to Comus, etc. 
 
 X In its original Latin sense, muteness, not speaking. 
 
350 WRITINGS OF MILTON — PROSE, 
 
 ventive* fear lest the omitting of this duty should be against me, 
 when I would store up to myself the good provision of peaceful 
 hours — so lest it should be stiU imputed to me, as I have found it 
 hath been, that some pleasing humour of vain glory hath excited 
 me to contest' with men of high estimation, now while green years 
 are upon my head, from this needless surmisal I shall hope to dis- 
 suade the intelligent and equalf auditor if I can but say success- 
 fully that which in this exigent behoves me : although I would 
 be heard only, if it might be, by the elegant and learned reader, 
 to whom principally, for a while, I shall beg leave I may address 
 myself. 
 
 To him it wiU be no new thing though I tell him that, if I 
 hunted after praise by the ostentation of wit and learning, I should 
 not write thus out of mine own season, when I have neither yet 
 completed to my mind the fiill circle of my private studies — al- 
 though I complain not of any insufficiency to the matter in hand 
 —or, were I ready to my wishes, it were a folly to commit any- 
 thing elaborately composed to the careless and interrupted listen- 
 ing of these tumultuous times.;]: Next, if I were wise only to my 
 own ends, I would certainly take such a subject as of itself might 
 catch applause — whereas this hath all the disadvantages on the 
 contrary — and such a subject as the publishing whereof might be 
 delayed at pleasure, and time enough to pencil it over with all the 
 curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultless pic- 
 ture; whereas in this argument the not deferring is of great 
 moment to the good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to do 
 her office art cannot have much. Lastly, I should not chuse this 
 manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, 
 led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, 
 as I may account, but of my left hand. And though I shall be 
 foolish in saying more to this purpose, yet, since it will be such 
 folly as wisest men go about to commit, having only confessed 
 and so committed, I may trust with more reason, because with 
 more folly, to have courteous pardoii. For, although a poet,§ soar- 
 ing in the high reason of his fancies with his garland and sing- 
 
 * In its Latin sense, anticipatory, like " prevenient grace." 
 t Squalls, equitable, just. 
 
 % This seems to be an allusion to his meditated great work. 
 § He had perhaps in his mind the description of Arion in the Fasti 
 of his favourite Ovid. 
 
REASON OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 351 
 
 ing-robes about him, might without apology speak more of him- 
 self than I mean to do, yet for me sitting here below in the cool 
 element of prose, a mortal thing among many readers of no em- 
 pyreal conceit, to venture and divulge unusual things of myself, 
 I shall petition to the gentler sort it may not be envy* to me. 
 
 I must say, therefore, that, after I had from my first years, by 
 the ceaseless care and diligence of my father — whom God recom- 
 pense ! — been exercised to the tongues and some sciences, as my 
 age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers both at home 
 and at the schools, it was found that, whether aught was imposed 
 me by them that had the overlooking, or betaken to of mine own 
 choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly 
 by this latter, the style by certain vital signs it had was likely to 
 live. But much latelier, in the private Academies of Italy, whither 
 I was favoured to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had 
 in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabouts — for the 
 manner is that every one must give some proof of his wit and 
 reading there — met with acceptance above what was looked for, 
 and other things, which I had shifted in scarcity of books and 
 conveniences to patch up amongst them, were received with writ- 
 ten encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on 
 men of this side the Alps — I began thus far to assent to them, 
 and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward 
 prompting which now grew daily upon me, that, by labour and in- 
 tense study — which I take to be my portion in this life — -joined 
 with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave some- 
 thing so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it* 
 die. These thoughts at once possessed me and these other ; that 
 if I were certain to write, as men buy leases, for three lives and 
 downward, there ought no regard be sooner had than to God's 
 glory, by the honour and instruction of my country. For which 
 cause, and not only for that I k^iew it would be hard to arrive at 
 the second rank among the Latins, I applied myself to that reso- 
 lution which Ariosto followed' against the persuasions of Bembo, 
 to fix aU the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my 
 native tongue ; not to make verbal curiosities the end — that were 
 a toilsome vanity — but to be an interpreter and relater of the best 
 and sagest things, among mine own citizens throughout this island, 
 in the mother-dialect : that what the greatest and choicest witsf 
 * Invidia, in its sense of odium. f Ingenia : see above, p. 28. 
 
352 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 of Athens, Borne, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did 
 for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over of being a 
 Christian, might do for mine ; not caring to be once named abroad 
 — though perhaps I could attain to that — ^but content with these 
 British islands as my world ; whose fortune hath hitherto been 
 that, if the Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds great 
 and renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had her 
 noble achievements made small by the unskilful handling of monks 
 and mechanics. 
 
 Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse, to 
 give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the spa- 
 cious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, 
 though of highest hope and hardest attempting : whether that epic 
 form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of 
 Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and the Book of Job a brief model ; 
 or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be kept, or 
 nature to be followed,* which, in them that know art and use 
 judgement, is no transgression, but an enriching of art ; and lastly, 
 what king or knight, before the Conquest, might be chosen in 
 whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero ; and, as Tasso gave 
 to a Prince of Italy his choice, whether he would command him 
 to write of Grodfrey's expedition against the Infidels, or Belisa- 
 rius' against the Groths, or Charlemain against the Lombards, if to 
 the instinct of nature and the emboldening of art aught may be 
 trusted, and that there be nothing adverse in our climate or the 
 fate of this age, it haply would be no rashness, from an equal dili- 
 gence and inclination to present the like offer in our own ancient 
 stories : or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein Sopho- 
 cles and Euripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal and exem- 
 plary t to a nation ; the Scripture also affords us a divine pastoral 
 drama in the Song of Solomon, consisting of two persons and a 
 double chorus, as Origen rightly judges, and the Apocalypse of 
 St. John is the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy, shut-, 
 ting up and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts with a 
 sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies,— and this 
 my opinion the grave authority of Parens, commenting that book, 
 is sufficient to confirm : or, if occasion shall lead, to imitate those 
 
 * As by Ariosto and Spenser, perhaps he means. 
 t L e. instructive, serving for example, as the Novelas Exemplares of 
 Cervantes. 
 
REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT. 353 
 
 magnific odes and hymns, wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are 
 in most things worthy, some others in their frame judicious, in 
 their matter most an end* faulty; but those frequent songs 
 throughout the Law and Prophets beyond all these, not in their 
 Divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition? 
 may be easily made appear over all the kinds of lyric poesy to be 
 incomparable. 
 
 These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift 
 of Grod, rarely bestowed, but yet to some — ^though most abuse — 
 in every nation ; and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to 
 imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and pub- 
 lic civility [civilization]; to allay the perturbations of the mind 
 and set the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and 
 lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and 
 what he works and what he suffers to be wrought with high Pro- 
 vidence in his Church ; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and 
 saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing 
 valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ ; to deplore 
 the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and Grod's 
 true worship ; lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, 
 in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration 
 in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or 
 the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within, — 
 all these things with a solid and tractable smoothness to paint out 
 and describe ; teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, 
 through all the instances of example, with such delight — to those 
 especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as 
 look upon Truth herself unless they see her elegantly dressed, 
 — that whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear now 
 rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they 
 will then appear to all men both easy and pleasant, though they 
 were rugged and difficult indeed. And what a benefit this would 
 be to our youth and gentry may be soon guessed by what we 
 know of the corruption and bane which they suck in daily from 
 the writings and interludes of libidinous and ignorant poetasters, 
 who, having scarce ever heard of that which is the main consis- 
 tence of a true poem, — the choice of such persons as they ought 
 
 * i. e. in- general, for the most part. In chap. iii. of this book, we 
 meet, " The patients which most an end are brought into his hospital." 
 We have not met with the plirase anywhere else. 
 
 2 A 
 
354 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 to introduce, and what is moral and decent to each one, — do for 
 the most part lay np vicious principles in sweet pills to be swal- 
 lowed down, and make the taste of virtuous documents [instruc- 
 tions] harsh and sour. 
 
 But because the spirit of man cannot demean* itself lively in 
 this body without some recreating intermission of labour and se- 
 rious things, it were happy for the Commonwealth if our magis- 
 trates, as in those famous governments of old, would take into their 
 care not only the deciding of our contentions, law-cases, and 
 brawls, but the managing of our public sports and festival-pas- 
 times ; that they might be, not such as were authorized a while 
 since,t the provocations of drunkenness and lust, but such as may 
 inure and harden our bodies by martial exercises to all warlike 
 skill and performance ; and may civilize, adorn, and make discreet 
 our minds, by the learned and affable meeting of frequent acade- 
 mies, and the procurement of wise and artful recitations, sweet- 
 ened with eloquent and graceful enticements to the love and prac- 
 tice of justice, temperance, and fortitude, instructing and bettering 
 the nation at all opportunities, that the call of Wisdom and Virtue 
 may be heard everywhere, as Solomon saith : " She crieth without, 
 she uttereth her voice in the streets, in the top of high-places, in 
 the chief concourse, and in the openings of the gates." Whether 
 this may not be, not only in pulpits, but, after another persuasive 
 method, at set and solemn panegyrics, in theatres, porches, or what 
 other place or way may win most upon the people to receive at 
 once both recreation and instruction, let them in authority decide. 
 
 The thing which I had to say, and those intentions which have 
 lived within me, ever since I could conceive myself anything worth 
 to my country, I return to crave excuse that urgent reason hath 
 plucked from me, by an abortive and foredated discovery. And 
 the accomplishment of them lies not but in a power above man's 
 to promise. But that none hath by more studious ways endea- 
 voured, and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I 
 dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and free leisure will ex- 
 tend, and that the land had once enfranchised herself from this 
 impertinent yoke of prelaty, under whose inquisitorious and ty- 
 rannical duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish. Neither 
 do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for 
 * i. e. conduct, demener Fr., dimenare It. 
 t Alluding again to the Book of Sports. 
 
REASON OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT. 355 
 
 some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the pay- 
 ment of what I am now indebted, as being a work, not to be 
 raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, — like that 
 which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the 
 trencher-fury of a riming parasite, — nor to be obtaiaed by the in- 
 vocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters,* but by de- 
 vout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utter- 
 ance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim, with the hallowed 
 fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. 
 To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady ob- 
 servation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs ; till 
 which in some measure be compassed at mine own peril and cost,t 
 I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not 
 loath to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can 
 give them. 
 
 Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much 
 beforehand, but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what 
 small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less 
 hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed 
 with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea 
 of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright coun- 
 tenance of Truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies, 
 to come into the dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the 
 seeming bulk, and there be fain to club quotations with men whose 
 learning and belief lies in marginal stuffings, who when they have, 
 like good sumpters, laid ye down their horse-loads of citations and 
 Fathers at your door, with a rhapsody of who and who were bi- 
 shops here or there, — ye may take ofi" their packsaddles, their day's 
 work is done, and episcopacy, as they think, stoutly vindicated. 
 Let any gentle apprehension, that can distinguish learned pains 
 from unlearned drudgery, imagine what pleasure or profoundness 
 can be in this, or what honour to deal against such adversaries. 
 But, were it the meanest under-service, if God by his secretary 
 Conscience enjoin it, it were sad for me, if I should draw back ; — 
 for me especially now when all men ofier their aid to help, ease, 
 and lighten the difficult labours of the Church, to whose service, 
 by the iatentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a 
 
 * The Muses, alluding to the songs of the Sirens, which Plato places 
 on the celestial spheres. 
 t Again alluding to his independent circumstances. 
 
 2 A 2 
 
356 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 child ; and in mine own resolutions, till coming to some maturity 
 of years and perceiving wliat tyranny had invaded the Church, 
 that he who would take orders must subscribe slave and take an 
 oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that would 
 retch [stretch], he must either straight perjure or split his faith, 
 I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred 
 office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswear- 
 ing. Howsoever thus church-outed by the prelates, hence may 
 appear the right I have to meddle in these matters, as before the 
 necessity and constraint appeared. 
 
 His object in the second book is to show " that Prelaty 
 opposeth the reason and end of the Gospel" in its out- 
 ward form by its pomp and magnificence, in its numerous 
 vain and useless ceremonies, and in its cruel and intolerant 
 jurisdiction. In proof he employs acute and vigorous 
 reasoning, strong invective, and ardent declamation. He 
 boldly maintains that the laity are entitled to exercise 
 such offices of discipline in the Church as their spiritual 
 gifts qualify them for exercising, and deduces the most 
 happy consequences from such a practice. 
 
 ANIMADVEESIONS ON THE REMONSTEANT'S DEFENCE 
 AGAINST SMECTYMNUTJS. 
 
 In this piece Milton follows the plan of citing the 
 exact words of the Remonstrant, and subjoining an an- 
 swer to them. The following passages may be quoted. 
 
 On the Apostolic Succession : — 
 
 See the frowardness of this man ! He would persuade us that 
 the succession and divine right of bishopdom hath been unques- 
 tionable through all ages, yet when they bring against him kings, 
 they were irreligious ; popes, they are Antichrist ! By what era 
 of computation, through what Eairy-land would this man deduce 
 the perpetual bead-roll of uncontradicted episcopacy ? The Pope 
 may as well boast his ungainsaid authority to them that will be- 
 lieve that all his contradictors were either irreligious or heretical. 
 
ANIMADVERSIONS, ETC. 357 
 
 On the use of the Fathers : — • 
 
 He bids ask of tlie old paths, or for the old paths, where or 
 which is the good way ; which implies that all old ways are not 
 good, but that the good way is to be searched [for] with diligence 
 among the old ways, which is a thing that we do in the oldest 
 records we have — the Gospel. And if others may chance to spend 
 more time with you in canvassing later antiquity, I suppose it is 
 not for that they ground themselves thereon, but that they en- 
 deavour — by showing the conceptions, uncertainties and disagree- 
 ments of those volumes, and the easiness of erring or overslipping 
 in such a boundless and vast search — if they may not convince 
 those that are so strongly persuaded thereof, yet to free, ingenuous 
 minds from an over-awful esteem of those more ancient than trusty 
 Fathers, whom custom and fond opinion, weak principles, and the 
 neglect of sounder and superior knowledge, hath exalted so high 
 as to have gained them a blind reverence ; whose books, in bigness 
 and number so endless and immeasurable, I cannot think that 
 either God or Nature, either divine or human wisdom, did ever mean 
 should be a rule or reliance to us in the decision of any weighty 
 and positive doctrine. For certainly every rule and instrument 
 of necessary knowledge that God hath given us ought to be so in 
 proportion as may be wielded and managed by the life of man, 
 without penning him up from the duties of human society ; and 
 such a rule and instrument of knowledge perfectly is the Holy 
 Bible. But he that shall bind himself to make Antiquity his rule, 
 if he read but part, — beside the difficulty of choice, — his rule is 
 deficient and utterly unsatisfying, for there may be other writers 
 of another mind which he hath not seen ; and if he undertake all, 
 the length of man's life cannot extend to give him a full and re- 
 quisite knowledge of what was done in Antiquity. Why do we 
 therefore stand worshipping and admiring this unactive and life- 
 less Colossus ? that, like a carved giant terribly menacing to chil- 
 dren and weaklings, lifts us his club but strikes not, and is sub- 
 ject to the muting of every sparrow. If you let him rest upon 
 his basis, he may perhaps delight the eyes of some with his huge 
 and mountainous bulk, and the quaint workmanship of his massy 
 limbs ; but if ye go about to take him in pieces, ye mar him ; and 
 if you think, like pygmies, to turn and wind him, whole as he is, 
 beside your vain toil and sweat, he may chance to fall upon your 
 
358 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 own heads. Q-o therefore and use all your art, apply your sledges, 
 your levers, and your iron crows to heave and hale your mighty 
 Polypheme of Antiquity, to the delusion of novices and inexperi- 
 enced Christians. We shall adhere close to the Scriptures of God, 
 which he hath left us as the just and adequate measure of truth, 
 fitted and proportioned to the diligent study, memory, and use of 
 every faithful man, whose every part consorting and making up the 
 harmonious symmetry of complete instruction, is able to set out 
 to us a perfect man of God, or bishop, thoroughly furnished to 
 all the good works of his charge ; and with this weapon, without 
 stepping a foot further, we shall not doubt to batter and throw 
 down your Nebuchadnezzar's image, and crumble it like the chaff 
 of the summer threshing-floors, as well the gold of those Apos- 
 tolic Successors that you boast of as your Constantinian silver, 
 together with the iron, the brass, and the clay of those muddy 
 and strawy ages that follow. 
 
 He gives his opinion as follows on the subject of Ordi- 
 nation : — 
 
 As for ordination, what is it but the laying on of hands, an 
 outward sign or symbol of admission ? It creates nothing, it con- 
 fers nothing. It is the inward calling of God that makes a mi- 
 nister, and his own painful study and diligence that manures and 
 improves his ministerial gifts. In the primitive times many, be- 
 fore ever they had received ordination from the Apostles, had done 
 the Church noble service, as Apollos and others. It is but an 
 orderly form of receiving a man already fitted, and committing 
 to him a particular charge. The employment of preaching is as 
 holy and far more excellent ; the care also and judgement to be 
 used in the winning of souls — which is thought to be sufficient 
 in every worthy minister — is an ability above that is required in 
 ordination ; for many may be able to judge who is fit to be made 
 a minister that would not be found fit to be made ministers them- 
 selves ; as it will not be denied that he may be competent judge 
 of a neat picture or elegant poem that cannot limn the like. 
 Why, therefore, we should constitute a superior order in the 
 Church to perform an office which is not only every minister's 
 function, but inferior also to that which he has a confessed right 
 to, and why this superiority should remain thus usurped, some 
 wise Epimenides tell us. 
 
ANIMADVERSIONS, ETC. 359 
 
 After some severe remarks on episcopal jurisdiction, 
 he gives the following apologue or law-case, as he terms 
 it. 
 
 A certain man of large possessions had a fair garden, and kept 
 therein an honest and laborious servant, whose skill and profession 
 was to set or sow all wholesome herbs and delightful flowers, ac- 
 cording to every season, and whatever else was to be done in a well- 
 husbanded nursery of plants and fruits. JSTow, when the time was 
 come that he should cut his hedges, prune his trees, look to his ten- 
 der slips, and pluck up the weeds that hindered their growth, he 
 gets him up by break of day, and makes account to do what was 
 needful in his garden : and who would think that any other should 
 know better than he how the day's work was to be spent ? Yet, 
 for all this there comes another strange gardener, that never knew 
 the soil, never handled a dibble or spade to set the least potherb 
 that grew there, much less had endured an hour's sweat or chill- 
 ness, and yet challenges as his right the binding or unbinding of 
 every flower, the clipping of every bush, the weeding and worming 
 of every bed, both in that and all other gardens thereabout. The 
 honest gardener, that ever since the daypeep till now the sun was 
 grown somewhat rank, had wrought painfully about his banks and 
 seedplots, at his commanding voice turns suddenly about with some 
 wonder ; and although he could have well beteemed* to have 
 thanked him for the ease he profiered, yet, loving his own handi- 
 work, modestly refused him, telling him withal, that for his part, if 
 he had thought much of his own pains, he could for once have 
 committed the work to one of his fellow-labourers, for as much as 
 it is well known to be a matter of less skill and less labour to keep 
 a garden handsome than it is to plant it or contrive it ; and that 
 he had already performed himself. " No," said the stranger, " this 
 is neither for you nor your fellows to meddle with, but for me only, 
 that am for this purpose in dignity far above you ; and the provi- 
 sion which the lord of the soil allows me in this office is, and that 
 with good reason, tenfold your wages." The gardener smiled and 
 
 * This word seems to be used here, as in — 
 
 That he might not heteem the winds of heaven 
 Visit her face too roughly, {Hamlet, i. 2,) 
 
 in the sense oi permit, allow. In A. S. cy'man is, to vouch, warrant, 
 
 witness. 
 
360 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 shook his head ; but what was determined, I cannot tell you till 
 the end of this Parliament.* 
 
 APOLOGY FOE SMECTYMNUUS. 
 
 As his opponent had made a most virulent and un- 
 justifiable attack on his private character, Milton, after 
 having at great length explained his motives for entering 
 on this controversy and vindicated his conduct in it, pro- 
 ceeds to give the following interesting particulars respect- 
 ing his life and pursuits. 
 
 I must be thought, if this libeller — for now he shows himself to 
 be so — ^can find belief, after an inordinate and riotous youth spent 
 at the University, to have been at length "vomited out thence." 
 Por which commodious lie, that he may be encouraged in the trade 
 another time, I thank him ; for it hath given me an apt occasion 
 to acknowledge publicly, with all grateful mind, the more than or- 
 dinary favour and respect which I found, above any of my equals, 
 at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of 
 that college wherein I spent some years : who, at my parting, after 
 I had taken two degrees as the manner is, signified many ways how 
 much better it would content them that I would stay, as by many 
 letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time 
 and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection to- 
 ward me : which being likewise prepense to all such as were for 
 their studious and civil life worthy of esteem, I could not wrong 
 their judgements and upright intentions so much as to think I had 
 that regard from them for other cause than that I might be still 
 encouraged to proceed in the honest and laudable courses, of which 
 they apprehended I had given good proof. And to those ingenuous 
 and friendly men, who were ever the countenancers of virtuous and 
 
 * That is, whether episcopacy would be retained or abohshed. Por 
 our own parts, though we acknowledge that the bishop and the pres- 
 byter were originally the same, and that the offices did not separate 
 perhaps till the second century, yet we approve of episcopacy as a dis- 
 tinct order, and would willingly see the whole patronage of the Church, 
 under proper restrictions, in the hands of the prelates, and themselves 
 really elective. 
 
APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS. 361 
 
 hopeful wits, I wish the best and happiest things that friends in 
 absence wish one to another. 
 
 As for the common [general] approbation or dislike of that place, 
 as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself or any other 
 the more for that, too simple and too credulous is the confiiter, if 
 he think to obtain with me or any right discemer. Of small prac- 
 tice were that physician who could not judge, by what she or her 
 sister hath of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly 
 keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is 
 queasy. She vomits now out of sickness, but ere it will be well 
 mth her she must vomit by strong physic. In the meantime that 
 suburh-sinJc, as this rude scavenger calls it, and more than scurri- 
 lously taunts it with the plague, having a worse plague in his mid- 
 dle entrail, — that suburb wherein I dwell shall be in my account a 
 more honourable place than his University ; which, as in the time 
 of her better health and my younger judgement, I never greatly 
 admired, so now much less. But he follows me to the city, still 
 usurping and forging beyond his book-notice, which only he af- 
 firms to have had, " and where my morning-haunts are he wisses 
 not." It is wonder that, being so rare an alchymist of slander, he 
 could not extract that as well as the university-vomit and the 
 suburb-sink, which his art could distill so cunningly. But, be- 
 cause his lembic fails him, to give him and envy the more vexation, 
 I will tell him. 
 
 Those morning-haunts are, where they should be, at home, not 
 sleeping or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up 
 and stirring ; in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men 
 to labour or to devotion ; in summer, as oft with the bird that first 
 rouses, or not much tardier ; to read good authors, or cause them 
 to be read, till the attention be weary or memory have its full 
 fraught: then with useful and generous labours preserving the 
 body's health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not 
 lumpish obedience to the mind, to religion, and our country's li- 
 berty, when it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand 
 and cover their stations rather than see the ruin of our protestation 
 and the enforcement of a slavish life. 
 
 These are the morning-practices ; proceed now to the afternoon. 
 " In playhouses," he says, " and the bordeUoes." Your intelli- 
 gence ? unfaithful spy of Canaan. He gives in his evidence that 
 "there he hath traced me." Take him at his word, readers. But, 
 
362 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 let him bring good sureties, ere ye dismiss him, tliat while he pre- 
 tended to dog others, he did not turn in for his own pleasure ; for 
 so much in effect he concludes against himself, not contented to 
 be caught in every other gin, but he must be such a novice as to 
 be still hampered in his own hemp. In the Animadversions, saith 
 he, I find the mention of old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers, 
 and salt lotion ; therefore the Animadvertor haunts playhouses 
 and bordelloes ; for if he did not, how could he speak of such 
 gear ? Now, that he may know what it is to be a child and yet to 
 meddle with edged tools, I turn his antistrophon upon his own 
 head. The Confuter knows that these things are the furniture 
 of playhouses and bordelloes, therefore, by the same reason, " the 
 Confuter himself has been traced in these places." Was it such a 
 dissolute speech, telling of some politicians, who were wont to 
 eavesdrop in disguises, — to say they were often liable to a night- 
 walking cudgeller or the emptying of a urinal ? What if I had 
 written, as your friend, the author of the aforesaid Mime, Mundus 
 Alter et Idem* to have been ravished like some young Cephalus 
 or Hylas, by a troop of camping housewives in Viraginea, and that 
 he was there forced to swear himself an uxorious varlet ; then 
 after a long servitude to have come into Aphrodisia, that pleasant 
 country, that gave such a sweet smell to his nostrils, among the 
 shameless courtesans of Desvergonia? Surely, he would then 
 have concluded me as constant at the bordello as the galley-slave 
 at his oar. 
 
 But since there is such necessity to the hearsay of a tire,t a 
 periwig, or a vizard, that plays must have been seen, what diffi- 
 culty was there in that ? When in the colleges so many of the 
 young divines, and those in next aptitude to divinity,^ have been 
 seen so often upon the stage, writhing and unboning their clergy- 
 limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buf- 
 foons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which 
 either they had or were wellnigh having, to the eyes of courtiers 
 and court-ladies, with their grooms and mademoiselles. § There, 
 
 * Bishop Hall, the father of Milton's opponent, 
 f Hearsay is the hearing of, knowing about ; tire is a head-dress. 
 X Divinity-students. 
 
 § That is, as we should now say, " with their own men and their 
 lady's-maids." It was the custom to go thus attended. We may see 
 
APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS. 363 
 
 while they acted and over-acted, among other young scholars I was 
 a spectator ; they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought 
 them fools ; they made sport, and I laughed ; they mispronounced, 
 and I misliked ; and, to make up the Atticism,* they were out, and 
 I hissed. Judge now whether so many good text-men were not 
 sufficient to instruct me of false beards and vizards, without more 
 expositors. And how can this Confuter take the face to object to 
 me the seeing of that which his reverend prelates allow and incite 
 their young divines to act ? For if it be unlawful to sit and 
 behold a mercenary comedian personating that which is least un- 
 seemly for a hireling to do, how much more blameful is it to en- 
 dure the sight of as vile things acted by persons either entered 
 or presently to enter into the ministry, and how much more foul 
 and ignominious for them to be the actors ! 
 
 After a brief apology for the appearance of egotism, 
 he then proceeds to give the following account of his 
 studies. 
 
 I had my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning 
 bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places where the opinion 
 was it might be soonest attained ; and, as the manner is, was not 
 unstudied in those authors which are most commended. Whereof 
 some were grave orators and historians, whose matter methought 
 I loved indeed, but as my age then was, so I understood them ; 
 others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not 
 scarce,t whom both for the pleasing sound of their numerous J 
 writing, which in imitation I found most easy and most agreeable 
 to Nature's part in me ; and for their matter, — which what it is 
 
 in Pepys' Diary, that even his wife was accompanied to the theatre by 
 her maid. 
 
 In the whole passage, he alludes to the custom of performing plays 
 at the Universities, so common at the time. Even so late as 1747, a 
 play named The Grateful Fair, by Christopher Smart, was, we are told, 
 performed at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Plays used also to be 
 performed at the Inns of Court. The practice is still continued in Har- 
 row and Westminster schools. 
 
 * Because he is here imitating a weU-known passage in Demosthenes* 
 speech against ^schines. 
 
 t i. e. which are much read in the schools. 
 
 X Numerosus, having numbers or harmony. 
 
364 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 there be few who know not, — I was so allured to read, that no 
 recreation came to me better welcome : for, that it was then those 
 years with me which are excused, though they be least severe,* 
 I may be saved the labour to remember ye. Whence having ob- 
 served them to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they 
 were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem them- 
 selves worthiest to love those high perfections which under one or 
 other name they took to celebrate,t I thought with myself by 
 every instinct and presage of nature, which is not wont to be false, 
 that what emboldened them to this task might, with such dili- 
 gence as they used, embolden me ; and that what judgement, 
 wit, or elegance was my share would herein best appear and 
 best value itself, by how much more wisely and with more love of 
 virtue I should chuse — ^let rude ears be absent — the object of not 
 unlike praises. For, albeit these thoughts to some will seem vir- 
 tuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort 
 perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious. 
 Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves 
 such a reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in 
 this life have sometimes preferred ; whereof not to be sensible, when 
 good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow 
 judgement, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For, by 
 the firm settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best me- 
 mory, so much a proficient, that if T found those authors any- 
 where speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of 
 those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought 
 with me, — from that time forward their art I still applauded, but 
 the men I deplored, and above them all preferred the two famous 
 renowners of Beatrice and Laura, J who never write but honour of 
 them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and 
 pure thoughts, without transgression. And long it was not after 
 when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be 
 frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, 
 ought himself to be a true poem, — that is, a composition and pat- 
 tern of the best and honourablest things, — not presuming to sing 
 
 * i. e. most inclined to love, and to light and amorous reading. 
 
 t It certainly must have been by a peculiar kind of mental alchemy, 
 that he could extract such pure materials from Tibullus, Propertius, 
 and Ovid. 
 
 t Dante and Petrarca. 
 
APOLOGY FOR SMECTYMNUUS. 365 
 
 higli praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in 
 himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praise- 
 worthy. These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of 
 nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem, either of what I 
 was or what I might be, — which let envy call pride, — and lastly 
 that modesty whereof, though not in the title-page,* yet here, I 
 may be excused to make some beseeming profession, — all these, 
 uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me still 
 above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must deject 
 and plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful pros- 
 titutions. 
 
 Next — for hear me out now, readers, that I may teU whither 
 my younger feet wandered, — I betook me among those lofty fables 
 and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knight- 
 hood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown 
 over all Christendom. There I read, in the oath of every knight, 
 that he should defend to the expense of his best blood, or even of 
 his life, if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of virgin or 
 matron ; from whence even then I learned "what a noble virtue 
 chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, 
 by such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn. And if I 
 found in the story afterwards any of them by word or deed break- 
 ing that oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet as that which 
 is attributed to Homer, to have written indecent things of the 
 gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle 
 spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to 
 expect the gilt spur or the laying a sword upon his shoulder to 
 stir him up, both by his counsel and his arms, to secure and pro- 
 tect the weakness of attempted chastity. So that even these books, 
 which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose 
 living,t — I cannot think how, unless by divine indulgence, — 
 proved to me so many incitements, as ye have heard, to the love 
 and steadfast observation of that virtue which abhors the society 
 of bordelloes. 
 
 Thus from the laureat fraternity of poets riper years and the 
 ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces J 
 of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato and his 
 
 * The title of his adversary's book was A Modest Refutation, etc. 
 t He probably had Ariosto chiefly in view. 
 X Spatia, courses or rounds of the circus. 
 
366 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 equal [contemporary] Xenophon : where if I should tell ye what 
 I learnt of chastity and love, — I mean that which is truly so, 
 whose charming-cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to 
 those who are worthy ; the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicat- 
 ing potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, 
 carries about, — and how the first and chiefest office of love begins 
 and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine 
 generation, knowledge and virtue. With such abstracted sublimi- 
 ties as these, it might be worth your listening, readers, as I may 
 one day hope to have ye, in a still time, when there shall be no 
 chiding ; not in these noises, the adversary, as ye know, barking 
 at the door or searching for me at the bordelloes, where it may be 
 he has lost himself and raps up, without pity, the sage and rheu- 
 matic old prelatess, with all her young Corinthian laity, to in- 
 quire for such a one. 
 
 Last of all, — not in time, but as perfection is last, — that care 
 was always had of me with my earliest capacity, not to be negli- 
 gently trained in the precepts of the Christian religion. This 
 that I have hitherto related hath been to show, that though [even 
 if] Christianity had been but slightly taught me, yet a certain re- 
 servedness of natural disposition, and moral discipline learnt out 
 of the noblest philosophy, was enough to keep me in disdain of 
 far less incontinences than this of the bordello. But, having had 
 the doctrine of Holy Scripture unfolding those chaste and high 
 mysteries with timeliest care infused, that " the body is for the 
 Lord, and the Lord for the body;" thus also I argued with my- 
 self, that if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory 
 of man, be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, 
 who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though com- 
 monly not so thought, be much more deflouring and dishonour- 
 able ; in that he sins both against his own body, which is the per- 
 fecter sex, and his own glory, which is in the woman, and, that which 
 is worst, against the image and glory of Grod, which is in himself. 
 Nor did I slumber over that place, expressing such high rewards 
 of ever accompanying the Lamb, with those celestial songs, to 
 others inapprehensible, but not to those who were not defiled with 
 women ; which doubtless means fornication,* for marriage must 
 not be called a defilement. 
 
 * This is the opinion of the best modern commentators. 
 
AREOPAGITTCA. 367 
 
 AEEOPAGITICA. 
 
 Milton commences this address to the ParHament with 
 many compliments to their love of truth, justice, and 
 liberty, which made them '' as willing to repeal any act 
 of their own setting forth, as any set forth by their pre- 
 decessors." Emboldened by this, he calls on them to 
 reconsider their late order "to regulate printing: — that 
 no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed, 
 unless the same be first approved and licensed by such, 
 or at least one of such, as shall be thereto appointed " 
 With this view, he proceeds to inform them by whom 
 this system of licensing was first invented ; next, to'^how 
 that it "avails nothing to the suppressing of scandal- 
 ous, seditious, and libellous books ;" and, finally, mat " it 
 will be primely to the discouragement of all learning and 
 the stop of truth, not onlyj^y^disexercising and blunting 
 
 our abilities in what we know ajready, bu Qfy hindering 
 and cropp ing the discove ry thatj mi ght be yet fnrther 
 made both in civil and religious_wisdom." 
 
 Having previously stated his opini on tha tjbooks , lik e 
 men, should be watched and pu nished as malefactor s 
 when they are found transgressing, he takes an historic 
 view of the mode of procedure in ancient Greece and 
 Rome, and under the Roman empire ; in none of which 
 appears any trace of examining books previous to publi- 
 cation. Even the reading of books that were condemned 
 was not prohibited till the popes had obtained temporal 
 authority, and even they used their power with modera- 
 tion till the time of the Reformation, when the Council 
 of Trent and the Inquisition devised, or developed, the 
 Index Expurgatorius, and forbade anything to be pub- 
 lished without the Imprimatur " of two or three glutton- 
 
368 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 ous friars." " And this was the rare morsel so officiously 
 snatched up, and so illfavouredly imitated by our In- 
 quisiturient bishops, and the attendant Minorites, their 
 chaplains." 
 
 He then answers the argument, that though the inven- 
 tors were bad, the thing itself may be good, and pro- 
 ceeds to showthat more good than evil m ust result from 
 reading books of all kinds. In the course of his argu- 
 ment he makes the following observations : — 
 
 I conceive therefore that when God did enlarge the universal 
 diet of man's body, — saving ever the rules of temperance, — he 
 then also as before left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our 
 minds, as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his 
 own leading capacity. How great a virtue is temperance ! how" 
 much of moment through the whole life of man ! Yet Grod com- 
 nuts the managing so great a trust, without particular law or pre- 
 scription, wholly to the demeanour [management] of every grow^n 
 man. And therefore when he himself tabled the Jews from 
 heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily portion of manna, 
 is computed to have been more than might have w^ell sufficed the^ 
 heartiest feeder thrice as many meals. For those actions which 
 enter into a man rather than issue out of him, and therefore de- 
 file not, God uses not to captivate [hold captive] under a perpetual 
 childhood of prescription, but trusts him, with the gift of reason, 
 to be his own chooser. There were but little work left for preach- 
 ing if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things 
 which heretofore were governed only by exhortation. Solomon 
 informs us that much reading is a weariness to the flesh, but 
 neither he nor any other inspired author tells us that such or such 
 reading is unlawful ; yet certainly, had God thought good to limit 
 us herein, it had been much more expedient to have told us what 
 was unlawful than what was wearisome. 
 
 ******* 
 
 As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can the re 
 be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the^ k nowledge 
 of evil ? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her 
 baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, 
 and yet prefer that which is truly better,. he is the true warfaring 
 
AREOPAGITICA. 369 
 
 Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, un- 
 exercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her ad- 
 versary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland 
 is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring 
 not innocence into the world ; we bring impurity much rather. 
 That which purifies us is trial ; and trial is by what is contrary. 
 That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contempla- 
 tion of evil, and knows not the utmost that Yice promises to her 
 followers and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure ;* her 
 whiteness is but an excremental [superficial] whiteness : which 
 was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser — whom I 
 dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas — 
 describing true temperance under the person of Guyon, brings him 
 with his Palmer through the cave of Mammon,t and the Bower 
 of earthly Bliss, that he might see and know and yet abstain. 
 
 Since therefore the knowledge and survey ofjnce^jg^jn this 
 wor ld so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, andjhe 
 scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more 
 safely and with less danger scout [make excursion] into the re- 
 gions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, 
 and hearin g all ma nner of reason ? And this is the benefit which 
 may be had of books promiscuously read. But of the harm that 
 may result hence, three kinds are usually reckoned. First is 
 feared the infection that may spread. But then all human learn- 
 ing and controversy in religious points must remove out of the 
 world. Yea, the Bible itself : for that ofttimes relates blasphemy 
 not nicely ; it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not un- 
 elegantly; it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against 
 Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus ;t in other 
 great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common 
 reader. And ask a Talmudist what ails the modesty of his mar- 
 ginal Keri that Moses and all the Prophets cannot persuade him 
 to pronounce the textual Chetiv.§ For these causes we know the 
 Bible itself put by the Papist into the first rank of prohibited 
 
 * Sir Thomas Overbury said truly, in his Wife : — 
 
 She is most truly good who best knows why. 
 t His memory deceived him here, for the Palmer was not with Guyon 
 in the cave. J In the Ecclesiastes. 
 
 § Of these terms the latter is the text, the former the marginal cor- 
 rection. 
 
 2 B 
 
370 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 books. The ancientest Fathers must be next removed, as Clement 
 of Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of Evangelic Preparation, 
 transmitting [passing] our ears through a hoard of heathen ob- 
 scenities to receive the Grospel. "Who finds not that Irenseus, 
 Epiphanius, Jerome, and others discover more heresies than they 
 well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion ? 
 
 He then replies to the argument, that the language of 
 these and of the heathen writers is not generally known, 
 by showing that they are known s^ufficiently for all evil 
 purposes. 
 
 But, on the other side, that infection which is from books of con- 
 troversy in religion is more doubtful and dangerous to the learned 
 than to the ignorant ; and yet these books must be permitted, un- 
 touched by the licenser. It will be hard to instance where any 
 ignorant man hath been ever seduced by any Papistical book in 
 English, unless it were commended and expounded to him by some 
 of that clergy ; and indeed all such tractates, whether false or true, 
 are as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be " un- 
 derstood without a guide." But of our priests and doctors how 
 many have been corrupted by studying the comments of Jesuits 
 and Sorbonists, and how fast they could transfuse that corruption 
 into the people, our experience is both late and sad. It is not for- 
 got since the acute and distinct Arminius was perverted merely by 
 the perusing ]of a nameless discourse written at Delft, which at 
 first he took in hand to confute. 
 
 But, it was alleged, we should not expose ourselves to 
 temptations without necessity, nor employ our time in 
 vain things. To both these objections he replies, that 
 " to all men such books are not temptations nor vanities, 
 but useful drugs and materials wherewith to temper and 
 compose effective and strong medicines, which man's life 
 cannot want [do without] ; while the rest, such as chil- 
 dren and childish men, may be exhorted to forbear, but 
 cannot be kept from them by all the licensing in the 
 world." He then comes to the authority of Plato, who 
 being a man, he says, " of high authority indeed, — but 
 
AREOPAGITICA. 371 
 
 least of all for his Commonwealth, — ^in the book of his 
 Laws, which no city ever yet received, fed his fancy with 
 making many edicts to his airy bm*gomasters, which 
 they who otherwise admire him wish had been rather 
 buried and excused in the genial cups of an Academic 
 night -sitting."* He shows how utterly impracticable 
 any scheme of this kind must be, and that under it 
 music, dress, and everything else should be put under 
 the licenser as well as books. 
 
 To sequester [ourselves] out of the world into Atlantic and 
 Utopian politics,t which never can be drawn into use, will not 
 mend our condition ; but to ordain wisely, as in this world of evil, 
 in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably. Nor is it 
 Plato's licensing of books will do this, which necessarily pulls 
 along with it so many other kinds of licensing as will make us all 
 both ridiculous and weary, and yet frustrate ; but those unwrit- 
 ten, or at least unconstraining, laws of virtuous education, reli- 
 gious and civil nurture, which Plato there mentions as the bonds 
 and ligaments of the Commonwealth, the pillars and the sustain- 
 ers of every written statute. These they be which will bear chief 
 sway in such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily 
 eluded. Impunity and remissness for certain are the bane of a 
 commonwealth ; but here the great art lies — to discern in what 
 the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things 
 persuasion only is to work. If every action which is good or evil 
 in man at ripe years were to be under pittance, prescription, and 
 compulsion, what were virtue but a name ? what praise could be 
 then due to well-doing ? what gramercy [thanks] to be sober, just, 
 and continent ? 
 
 Many there be that complain of Divine Providence for suffering 
 Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues ! When Grod gave him rea- 
 son, he gave him freedom to choose ; for reason is but choosing. 
 He had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is 
 in the motions.^ We ourselves esteem not of that obedience or 
 
 * Alluding to Plato's Banquet. 
 
 t He means the New Atalantis of Bacon and the Utopia of More. 
 
 X This was the old name of puppet-shows. 
 
 2 B 2 
 
372 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 love, or gift, which is of force ; God therefore left him free, set 
 before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes. Herein 
 consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of 
 his abstinence. Wherefore did he create passions within us, plea- 
 sures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very 
 ingredients of virtue ? They are not skilful considerers of human 
 things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin. 
 For, beside that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of 
 diminishing, though some part of it may for a time be withdrawn 
 from some persons, it cannot from all, in such a universal thing as 
 books are. And when this is done, yet the sin remains entire. 
 Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet 
 one jewel left — ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. Banish 
 all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline tliat 
 can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste 
 that came not thither so. Such great care and wisdom is required 
 to the right managing of this point ! 
 
 Suppose w^e could expel sin by this means ; look ! how much we 
 thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue ; for the matter of 
 them both is the same. Eemove that, and ye remove them both 
 alike. This justifies the high providence of God, who, though he 
 commands us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before 
 us, even to a profuseness, all desirable things, and gives us minds 
 than can wander beyond all limit and satiety. "UHiy should we then 
 affect a rigour contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by 
 abridging or scanting those means which books freely permitted 
 are to the trial of virtue and the exercise of truth ? It would be 
 better done to learn that the law must needs be frivolous which 
 goes to restrain things uncertainly, and yet equally working to 
 good and evil ; and, were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing 
 should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hin- 
 derance of evil-doing. For God sure esteems the growth and 
 completing of one virtuous person more than the restraint of ten 
 vicious. And albeit whatever things we hear or see, sitting, walk- 
 ing, travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book, and is 
 of the same effect that writings are ; yet grant the thing to be pro- 
 hibited were only books, it appears that this order hitherto is far 
 insufficient to the end which it intends, etc. 
 
 HejtheiL-sliows how utterly impracticable this plan of 
 
AREOPAGITICA. 373 
 
 lic ensing is, and next proceeds to the proof of its actin g 
 a s a discoi irap;ement to learninp;. and bein^ an insult to 
 learned men . Having gone through this matter, he thus 
 addresses the Parliament : — 
 
 And lest some should persuade ye, Lords and Commons, that these 
 arguments of learned men's discouragement at this your order are 
 mere flourishes and not real, I could recount what I have seen and 
 heard in other countries, where this kind of Inquisition tyrannizes ; 
 when I have sat among their learned men — for that honour I had 
 — and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic 
 freedom as they supposed England was, while themselves did no- 
 thing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst 
 them was brought ; that this was it which had damped the glory 
 of Italian wits, that nothing had been there written now these 
 many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found 
 and visited the famous Galileo, grown old a prisoner to the In- 
 quisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan 
 and Dominican licensers thought.* And though I knew that Eng- 
 land then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, never- 
 theless I took it for a pledge of future happiness that other na- 
 tions were so persuaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my 
 hope that those worthies were then breathing in her air who should 
 be her leaders to such a deliverance as shall never be forgotten by 
 any revolution of time that this world hath to finish. When that 
 was once begun it was as little in my fear that what words of com- 
 plaint I heard among learned men of other parts uttered against 
 the Inquisition, the same I should hear by as learned men at home 
 uttered in time of Parliament against an order of licensing : and 
 that so generally, that, when I had disclosed myself a companion 
 of their discontent, I might say — if without envy — that he whom 
 an honest qusBstorship had endeared to the Sicilians was not more 
 by them importuned against Yerres, than the favourable opinion 
 which I had among many who honour ye, and are known and re- 
 spected by ye, loaded me with entreaties and persuasions that I 
 would not despair to lay together that which just reason should 
 bring into my mind toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom 
 upon learning. 
 
 * And than Milton himself thought. Galileo was not a prisoner 
 when Milton was in Italy. 
 
374 WRITINGS OF MILTON^ — PROSE. 
 
 That this is not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, 
 but the common grievance of all those who had prepared their 
 minds and studies above the vulgar pitch, to advance truth in 
 others, and from others to entertain it, thus much may satisfy. 
 And in their name, I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what 
 the general murmur is : that if it come to Inquisitioning again and 
 licensing, and that we are so timorous of ourselves and suspicious 
 of all men, as to fear each book and the shaking of each leaf, be- 
 fore we know what the contents are ; if some who but of late were 
 little better than silenced from preaching shall come now to silence 
 us from reading, except what they please — it cannot be guessed 
 what is intended by some but a second tyranny over learning, and 
 will soon put it out of controversy that bishops and presbyters are 
 the same to us, both name and thing.* 
 
 He then expands this last thought, and exposes the 
 hypocrisy of those who maintained " while bishops were 
 to be baited down, then all presses might be open; it 
 was the people's birthright and privilege in time of Par- 
 liament, it was the breaking forth of light;" but who, 
 when they had gained their ends, sought to reimpose the 
 fetters on the press. Next, he shows that this practice , 
 " instead^ of suppressing sects and^ schisms, raises them 
 and invests them with a reputation." It may also, he 
 says, prove a step- dame to truth, '' by disenabhng us to 
 the maintenance of what is known already." 
 
 Well knows he who uses to consider that our faith and know- 
 ledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion.f 
 Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain ; if her 
 waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a 
 muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic 
 in the truth ; and if he believe things only because his pastor says 
 so or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, 
 though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his 
 
 * See above, p. 201. 
 
 t That is, constitution, as in " he was of a sanguine complexion," and 
 such-like phrases. 
 
AREOPAGITICA. 375 
 
 heresy. There is not any burden that some would gladlier post off 
 to another than the charge and care of their religion ; there be — 
 who knows not that there be ? — of Protestants and professors who 
 live and die in as errant and implicit faith as any lay-papist of 
 Loretto. 
 
 A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasures and to his profits, finds 
 religion to be a traffic so entangled and of so many fiddling ac- 
 counts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going 
 upon that trade. "What should he do ? Pain he would have the 
 name to be religious, fain he would bear up with his neighbours in 
 that. What does he therefore ? but resolves to give over toiling, 
 and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he 
 may commit the managing of his religious affairs — some divine of 
 note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the 
 whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into 
 his custody ; and indeed makes the very person of this man his 
 religion, esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and 
 commendatory of his own piety : so that a man may say his reli- 
 gion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual mov- 
 able, and goes and comes near him according as that good man 
 frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts 
 him, lodges him. His religion comes home at night, prays, is li- 
 berally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted ; 
 and, after the malmsey or some well-spiced brewage and [being] 
 better breakfasted than He whose morning-appetite would have 
 gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his reli- 
 gion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the 
 shop, trading all day without his religion. 
 
 Another sort there be, who when they hear that all things shall 
 be ordered, all things regulated and settled, nothing written but 
 what passes through the customhouse of certain publicans, that 
 have the tonnaging and poundaging of all free-spoken truth, will 
 straight give themselves up into your hands. Make them and 
 cut them out what religion ye please. There be delights, there 
 be recreations and jolly pastimes that will fetch the day about from 
 sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream. 
 What need they torture their heads with that which others have 
 taken so strictly and so unalterably into their own purveying? These 
 are the fruits which a duU ease and cessation of our knowledge 
 will bring forth among the people. How goodly and how to be 
 

 376 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 wished were sucli an obedient unanimity as this ! What a ^fine 
 conformity would it starch us into ! Doubtless a staunch and 
 solid piece of framework as any January could freeze together. 
 
 To the clergy themselves the licensing system would 
 be injurious, as it would cause a stagnation of i ntelle ct 
 among them when they had nothing to contend against. 
 But to the nation in general, the loss and detriment that 
 it would cause would be " more than if some enemy at 
 sea should stop up all our havens and ports and creeks; 
 it hinders and retards the importation of our richest mer- 
 chandise — truth." 
 
 Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, 
 and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on. But when he 
 ascended, and his Apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight 
 arose a wicked race of deceivers, who — as that story goes of the 
 Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the 
 good Osiris — took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a 
 thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. Erom that 
 time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imi- 
 tating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of 
 Osiris, went up and down, gathering up limb by limb still as they 
 could find them. "We have not yet found them all, Lords and Com- 
 mons, nor ever shall do till her Master's second coming. He shall 
 bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into 
 an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these 
 licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity, for- 
 bidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue 
 to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint. 
 
 The rest of the piece is devoted to an eloquent apn^l 
 to the Parliament, not by the imposition of this yoke to 
 check the progress of the truth and of reformation wliich 
 God is setting forth in the world, and in which " he re- 
 veals himself to his servants, and, as his manner is,~ first 
 to his Englishmen." "' 
 
 I say, as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the me- 
 
HISTORY OP ENGLAND. 377 
 
 thod of his counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast 
 city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of Liberty, encompassed 
 and surrounded with his protection. The shop of war hath not 
 there more anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates 
 and instruments in defence of beleaguered Truth than there be pens 
 and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, 
 revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present, as with 
 their homage and fealty, the approaching reformation ; others as 
 fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and 
 convincement. 
 
 Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant people, rousing 
 herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible 
 locks. Methinks I see her, as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, 
 and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday-beam, purging 
 and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of hea- 
 venly radiance; while the whole noise* of timorous and flocking 
 birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about amazed 
 at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate 
 a year of sects and schisms. 
 
 Here we pause, advising the reader carefully to peruse 
 the entire of this noble treatise. 
 
 HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Of this work WnrhurtoTi has given the following judge- 
 ment :t — " It ifi written with-great .sdmplir.ity, contrary to 
 his custom in his prose- writings, amLi&^the . better., for it . 
 But he sometimes rises into a surprising grandeur in the 
 sentiments and expressions, as at the end of the second 
 book. I never saw anything equal to this, but the con- 
 clusion of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World.'' 
 
 "gmvT] this dpp.isinn wp. dl&g^ Wp prnmr^ t, dJSCem the 
 
 l ai i jlpd simpli c i ty; oiLlhe contrary, the inversinnR.jtad 
 Latitusms, with which it abounds, jje far more offensive 
 
 * A noise was a band of music. 
 
 t Milford's Life of Milton, p. Ixxxi. 
 
378 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 in mere narrative than when, as in his controversial wri- 
 tings, they are mingled with vigorous reasoning, lofty de- 
 clamation, or keen invective. Milton in effect was not an 
 historian ; he had not the requisite talent and frame of 
 mind, and he never could have formed his style to the 
 dignified simplicity belonging to the true historian ; and 
 though his work, of course, contains may noble passages, 
 we doubt if any one ever read it through with pleasure. 
 One reason is, he did not possess that historic tact and 
 feeling, which would have made him discern, as it were 
 by instinct, what was of real, what merely of apparent, 
 importance; and so, what should be omitted, what re- 
 tained, in order to interest and instruct. He has on the 
 contrary jumbled together all that he found in the an- 
 nalists. We see nothing remarkable in the passage al- 
 luded to by Warburton, and we regard the Iconoclastes 
 as a far nearer approach to ease and simplicity of style. 
 
 In the commencement of the third book of his history, 
 Milton, who had witnessed public and suffered private 
 wrong from them, took occasion to draw a true, but most 
 unfavourable, portrait of the Long Parliament and of the 
 Assembly of Divines. Strange as it may seem, this pas- 
 sage was expunged by the licenser when the work was 
 published in 1670. Modern critics have been perplexed 
 by this circumstance ; yet Toland had intimated the real 
 cause, — namely, that the description would answer for 
 the Parliament and hierarchy of the Monarchy as well 
 as for those of the Commonwealth. In fact, with the 
 requisite modifications and limitations, it will answer for 
 those of all times and countries, for man is always the 
 same, self-interest always his moving power ; civil and 
 religious assemblies, boards and commissions, and public 
 men in general, are always alike, and those who have de- 
 
HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 379 
 
 spotic power will use it like despots. Few reflect how 
 much of the public virtue of the present day is owing 
 to the freedom of the press and the extensive circulation 
 of our political journals. Were it not for them, public 
 men would be far different from what they are. Still 
 the knowledge and the power of the press is hmited, and 
 many have to endure the tyranny, the caprice, and the 
 injustice of men in authority, — 
 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes. 
 
 The following is Milton's account of the Parhament 
 and Assembly : — 
 
 A Parliament being called to address [rectify] many things, as 
 it was thought, the people — with great courage and expectation 
 to be eased of what discontented them — chose to their behoof 
 in Parliament such as they thought best affected to the public 
 good ; and some indeed men of wisdom and integrity, the rest, to 
 be sure the greater part, whom wealth, or ample possessions, or 
 bold and active ambition, rather than merit, had recommended to 
 the same place. 
 
 But, when once the superficial zeal and popular fumes that 
 acted [actuated] their new magistracy were cooled and spent in 
 them, straight every one betook him, 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 favour 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 sooth and humour them best ; so that 
 he who would give most, or, under covert of hypocritical zeal, in- 
 sinuate 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 con- 
 tained the repealing of bad laws and the immediate constitution 
 
380 WRITINGS OF MILTON PROSE. 
 
 of better, resounded with nothing else but new impositions, taxes 
 and excises, yearly, monthly, weekly ; not to reckon the offices, 
 gifts, and preferments bestowed and shared among themselves. 
 They, in the meanwhile, who were ever faithfullest to this cause, 
 and freely aided them in person or with their substance, when 
 they durst not compel either, slighted and bereaved after of their 
 just debts by greedy sequestrations, were tossed up and down 
 after miserable attendance from one committee to another with 
 petitions in their hands ; yet either missed the obtaining of their 
 suit, or, though it were at length granted, — mere shame and rea- 
 son ofttimes extorting from them at least a shew of justice, — yet, 
 by their sequestrators and subcommittees abroad, men for the 
 most part of insatiable hands and noted disloyalty, those orders 
 were commonly disobeyed ; which for certain durst not have been 
 without secret compliance [complicity] if not compact with some 
 superiors able to bear them out. Thus were their friends confis- 
 cate in their enemies, while they forfeited their debtors to the 
 State, as they called it, but indeed to the ravening seizure of in- 
 numerable thieves in office ; yet were withal no less burdened in 
 all extraordinary assessments and oppressions than those whom 
 they took to be disaffected ; nor were we happier [i. e. more for- 
 tunate] creditors to what we called the State, than to them who 
 w^ere sequestered as the State's enemies.* For that faith which 
 ought to have been kept as sacred and inviolate as anything holy, 
 the Public Faith, after infinite sums received and all the wealth 
 of the Church not better employed [sc. than heretofore], but 
 swallowed up into a private gulf, was not ere long ashamed to 
 confess bankrupt. And now, beside the sweetness of bribery and 
 other gain, with the love of rule, their own guiltiness and the 
 dreaded name of Just Account, which the people had long called 
 for, discovered plainly that there were of their own number who 
 secretly contrived and fomented those troubles and combustions 
 in the land, which openly they sat to remedy ; and would continu- 
 ally find such work as should keep them from being ever brought 
 to that terrible stand of laying down their authority for lack of 
 new business, or not drawing it out to any length of time, though 
 upon the ruin of a whole nation. 
 
 * In what precedes he had plainly his own case in view ; sec above, 
 page 126. What he says of debtors and creditors alludes clearly to him- 
 self and the property of Mr. Powell. 
 
HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 381 
 
 And if the State were in this plight, Eeligion was not in much 
 better. To reform which a certain number of divines were called, 
 neither chosen by any rule or custom ecclesiastical, nor eminent 
 for either piety or knowledge above others left out ; only as each 
 member of Parliament in his private fancy thought fit, so elected 
 one by one. The most part of them were such as had preached 
 and cried down with great shew of zeal the avarice and pluralities 
 of bishops and prelates ; that one cure of souls was a full employ- 
 ment for one spiritual pastor, how able soever, if not a charge 
 rather above human strength. Yet these conscientious men — ere 
 any part of the work done for which they came together, and that 
 on the public salary, — wanted not boldness, to the ignominy and 
 scandal of their pastorlike profession, and especially of their 
 boasted reformation, to seize into their hands or not unwillingly 
 to accept — beside one, sometimes two or more, of the best livings, 
 — collegiate masterships in the universities,* rich lectures in the 
 city, setting sail to all winds that might blow gain into their co- 
 vetous bosoms : by which means these great rebukers of non-resi- 
 dence were not ashamed to be seen so quickly pluralists and non- 
 residents themselves, to a fearful condemnation doubtless by their 
 own mouths. And yet the main doctrine for which they took such 
 pay, and insisted upon with more vehemence than gospel, was but 
 to tell us in effect that their doctrine was worth nothing and the 
 spiritual power of their ministry less available than bodily com- 
 pulsion ; persuading the magistrate to use it, as a stronger means 
 to subdue and bring in conscience than evangelical persuasion ; 
 distrusting the virtue of their own spiritual weapons, which were 
 given them, if they be rightly called, with full warrant of suffi- 
 ciency to pull down all thoughts and imaginations that exalt them- 
 selves against God. But while they taught compulsion without 
 convincement — which not long before they complained of as ex- 
 ecuted unchristianly against themselves — their intents are clear 
 to have been no better than antichristian ; setting up a spiritual 
 tyranny by a secular power, to the advancing of their own au- 
 thority above the magistrate, whom they would have made their 
 executioner, to pimish Church-delinquencies, whereof civil laws 
 have no cognizance. 
 
 * This very thing appears to have been done by Milton's old master 
 and friend Thomas Young : see above, page 99. 
 
382 
 
 MILTON AS A WRITER. 
 
 As a general quality of Milton's writings in verse, as 
 well as in prose, we may observe the logical order and 
 sequence in which his thoughts and arguments are ar- 
 ranged. It was this secret love of order and method 
 that led him so often to occupy himself with works ap- 
 parently so alien from the lofty pursuits and aspirations 
 of a poet ; such as his Christian Doctrine, a Latin Dic- 
 tionary, and treatises on grammar and logic ; for a mind 
 so constituted finds an inexpressible pleasure in tracing 
 analogies, bringing together parts which lie scattered 
 and dispersed, and forming out of them one harmonious 
 whole. Dante seems to have had a similar turn of mind; 
 but we doubt if it is to be found in any other great poet. 
 In his earliest poems the language of Milton, while 
 highly poetic, is simple and idiomatic ; but in those 
 written toward the close of his academic career, we may 
 discern some tendency to that artificial, unnatural style 
 so prevalent among the most polished nations of Europe 
 in the early part of the seventeenth century, the Marin- 
 ism of Italy, the Cultismo or Gongorism of Spain, the 
 Precieux of France, and the Euphuism of England. From 
 this however he soon emancipated himself, and there is 
 not a trace of it to be found in the poems written at 
 Horton. In those poems also may be discerned the first 
 
MILTON AS A WRITER. 383 
 
 traces of the love for long periods which distinguishes 
 his prose writings. Thus in his poem on Time there 
 are only two sentences, one of eight, the other of four- 
 teen lines; in that At a Solemn Music in the same 
 manner there are only two, the first of twenty-four, the 
 second of only four lines.* 
 
 In all Milton's verses the rimes are as exact as in the 
 French and Italian languages. This however is not pe- 
 culiar to him ; it was the case with perhaps all our poets 
 anterior to Waller and Cowley. Thus in the whole of 
 the Faery Queen there are not so many bad rimes as 
 in Pope. Indeed Spenser went to a most reprehensible 
 length in this respect, making his words always rime to 
 the eye as well as to the ear ; and by a strange sort of su- 
 perstition, that barbarous, repulsive, and capriciousf sys- 
 tem of orthography has been preserved to the present day 
 by the editors and publishers of his poems. We cannot 
 understand why Jiis orthographic vagaries should be held 
 so sacred, while the text of all other works of the time, 
 the Bible included, has been reduced to the modern form ; 
 and we feel quite siu-e that if the same were done with 
 the Faery Queen, carefully however preserving the rimes, 
 that the number of its readers would be very much aug- 
 mented. But it should be done with great judgement 
 and caution. 
 
 Our old poets, to effect this accuracy of rime, employed 
 various forms of the same word. Thus, for example, 
 when shew — which we look on as the original form J— 
 
 * In one of Horace's Odes (iv. 4), the first sentence is of twenty- 
 eiglit lines, and in Gresset's La Chartreuse there is one of ninety. 
 
 t We use this term, for what else but mere caprice could have made 
 him, without any exigence of rime, write joy ioy, joint ioint, and such 
 like? 
 
 X The common practice at the presentMay of writing shew, and pro- 
 
384 WRITINGS OF MILTON. 
 
 was to rime with grew, view, etc., they retained and pro- 
 nounced shew, but if with low, grow, etc., they wrote and 
 pronounced show. In like manner, they had strew strow, 
 shrew shroiv, grove greave, lose lese, hair hear, etc. Then 
 again, from the commutability of a and e, — as we pro- 
 nounce Berkshire, clerk, etc., Barkshire, dark, etc., — 
 if desert, for instance, was to rime with art, heart, they 
 pronounced it desart. The same was the case with e and 
 I ; yet rimed with hit. Jit, etc. So also are, riming with 
 care, rare, etc., was pronounced like them ;* and have 
 like cave, rave, etc. ; its invariable sound, by the way, 
 at the end of a verse. Taste, chaste, waste, when riming 
 with fast, last, etc., were pronounced like them. This 
 however we believe to have been their usual sound at the 
 time.f 
 
 We may thus see how our old poets were able to have 
 exact rimes, without being under the necessity of abs- 
 taining from the use of a number of important and va- 
 luable words. 
 
 In Waller however and his successors we find not only 
 such words as the elder poets made to rime together in 
 this manner continued as good rimes after the pronuncia- 
 
 nouncing show, is to be condemned. To our great surprise, Mr. Dyce 
 has followed it in his valuable edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, even 
 where the rime required show. 
 
 * It is very remarkable that Fairfax never uses this rime, so common 
 in all the other poets. 
 
 t In fact, we have hardly a single clear instance of the a in these 
 words being pronounced as in fate. As they all came from the French, 
 the a may have retained its original sound. The French a was also 
 expressed by au, as in chaunge, straunge, raunge, auncient, etc., which 
 we still retain in some m ords, as haunt, daunt, etc. We doubt if at that 
 time a in a final syllable was ever pronounced as in fate, except when 
 followed by a single consonant and e. Yet, strange enough, they gave 
 this sound to the Latin a, making tlie final a of Heruha, Helena, etc., 
 rime with stay, obey, etc. 
 
MILTON AS A WRITER. 385 
 
 tion had become fixed, but many words used in accord 
 which those poets had never so employed. Thus Waller 
 makes ear, fear, dear, sea, etc., rime with care, air, fair, 
 hair, prey, obey, etc.; throw, grow, know, throne, etc., with 
 hough, now, down, crown, etc.; do, you, etc., with know, 
 owe, etc. Pope, beside many of these, has face, glass ; 
 grace, brass ; vain, man ; make, back ; most, placed ; com- 
 pare, war, etc. This Hcense we hold to be inexcusable, 
 for there should be some similarity of sound. 
 
 The distinguishing quality of Milton's prose-WTiting is 
 vigour, to which is to be added earnestness, dignity, and 
 eloquence, joined with sound logical reasoning from his 
 premisses, which however are not always to be admitted. 
 It must certainly be confessed that his sentences are fre- 
 quently too long,* and too much involved ; and that their 
 structure is classical rather than English, and that he is 
 too fond of using words derived from the Latin in their 
 primitive physical sense. But at the same time we ven- 
 ture to assert that his periods are in general harmonious, 
 and fill the ear agreeably, and with the aid of proper 
 punctuation are perfectly clear and intelHgible to any 
 attentive reader ; but they certainly do require more in- 
 tension of the mind than most writings of the present 
 or preceding century. f It may in truth be questioned 
 if too much lucidity may not sometimes be a fault, as it 
 causes the attention to be relaxed. We have ourselves 
 often experienced this disadvantage in reading French 
 works. 
 
 * He appears to have held short sentences in contempt ; for in the 
 Apol. for Sinect., when speaking of his opponent, he says, " Instead of 
 well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies." 
 
 t The writings of Milton's contemporary, Baxter, appear to us to 
 offer an excellent model of ease, vigour, and lucidity. The style of 
 Bishop Hall too is extremely good. 
 
 'I C 
 
386 WRITINGS OF MILTON. 
 
 Prom the following sentence of Hallam on the prose 
 style of Milton, we must express our total dissent. 
 
 Even in the Areopagitica lie frequently sinks in a single in- 
 stant, as is usual with our old writers, from his highest flights to 
 the ground; his intermixture of familiar with learned phraseo- 
 logy is unpleasing ; his structure is afiectedly elaborate ; and he 
 se ldom reaches any harmony. If he turns to invective, as some- 
 times in this treatise, and more in his Apology for Smectymnuus, 
 it is mere ribaldrous vulgarity blended with pedantry ; his wit is 
 always poor and without ease. An absence of idiomatic grace, 
 and a use of harsh inversions, violating the rules of the language, 
 distinguish in general the writings of Milton.* 
 
 Every writer should be judged by the laws and usages 
 of his own time, for nothing is more fleeting and capri- 
 cious than phraseology. The graceful and elegant of one 
 period becomes often the coarse and indecent of another 
 of more real or fancied refinement. Thus the Spectator 
 was regarded as a model of propriety at the time it was 
 written, yet now it is frequently withheld from the young 
 and from the fair, on account of its indelicacy. In like 
 manner, in the middle of the last century, Fielding, when 
 dedicating his immortal romance to the virtuous Lord 
 Lyttleton, could say, and we believe with perfect truth, 
 that the reader would find in it " nothing inconsistent 
 with the strictest rules of decency, nor which can offend 
 even the chastest eye in the perusal.'* Yet what is the 
 current opinion on that subject at present ! Refined and 
 delicate as we fancy the literature of the present day to 
 be, a period of super-refinement may arrive which may 
 withhold some of it from the hands of the young and 
 the fair. The Horatian Tit silvce foliis pronos, etc., ap- 
 plies to ideas and phrases as well as to the single words. 
 We say then, let Milton be judged by the standard of his 
 * Literature of Europe, iii. 151. 
 
MILTON AS A WRITER. 387 
 
 age, and we will maintain that, in all his writings, there 
 is not a single passage to which the expression "ribal- 
 drous vulgarity " can with justice be applied. Neither 
 do we esteem his wit to be so very "poor," for we meet 
 with passages of genuine humour ; though, as he him- 
 self avowed, even in his younger days, humour was not 
 his talent. As to his "nevgr reaching any harmony," 
 we think it sufficient to refer the reader to our extracts 
 from his writings. To our ear, there are few passages in 
 Milton less harmonious than this very passage quoted 
 from Mr. Hallam's own work. 
 
388 
 
 MILTON^S LATIN WRITINGS. 
 
 Milton, like most of the learned men of the age, wrote 
 in Latin both in prose and verse. The former will, we 
 believe, bear a comparison with any Latin prose of the 
 time, unless we should think that of the natives of the 
 countries which speak languages derived from the Latin 
 to be excepted ; as a modern Latin poet, critics are dis- 
 posed to assign him a place in the first rank. It is not 
 unworthy of notice, that while in English prose he de- 
 lighted in long and involved sentences, his Latin periods 
 are neither very long nor much involved. This probably 
 arose from his close adherence to his models; for the 
 genius of the Latin language, unlike the Greek, is in- 
 clined to brevity and condensation. 
 
 To own the truth, we are no great admirers of mo- 
 dem Latin. In the middle and subsequent ages, when 
 modern languages were little cultivated and were rarely 
 learned by strangers, a writer had but a slender chance 
 of being known out of his own country if he used his 
 mother-tongue ; men of letters also formed then a more 
 distinct class than they do at present, and they wrote for 
 their own society rather than for the public. The Latin 
 had been transmitted as the language of literature ; an- 
 nals and chronicles were usually written in it, as well as 
 works of science ; it was the common language of men 
 
Milton's latin writings. 389 
 
 of learning, and he who wrote in it might reckon on 
 being read wherever literature was cultivated. Thus, to 
 take an example from the North, the History of Saxo 
 Grammaticus was well known out of Denmark, where 
 it was written, while the more valuable Heimskringla of 
 Snorro was only known to those who spoke the Icelandic 
 language. Even in the sixteenth century, Mariana, De 
 Thou, Buchanan, and others, wrote their Histories in 
 Latin, in the hope of being more extensively read and 
 known. In like manner, when men of genius and learn- 
 ing were endowed with poetic talent, they exercised it in 
 the language which alone was esteemed by the members 
 of their society. Thus Dante, it is said, — but we have 
 some doubt on the subject, — at first proposed to write his 
 great poem in Latin, and Petrarca actually did write in 
 that language his Africa, the poem from which he ex- 
 pected his highest fame, while on his vernacular poetry 
 he set comparatively little value. We need not say how 
 posterity has reversed his judgement. Bembo, too, se- 
 riously urged Ariosto to write his graceful and sportive 
 poem in Latin; but perhaps he did not know of what 
 species it was intended to be. The Latin poetry however 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries consisted on 
 the whole chiefly of short pieces, such as odes and elegies. 
 It was admired in its day, but for many years it has only 
 been known to a few students. No poet whatever has 
 obtained permanent fame by his Latin verses. 
 
 There is, and must be, one incurable defect in aU com- 
 position in a dead language ; it belongs to no particular 
 period, writers of various ages having been used as mo- 
 dels and authorities. Let us suppose a Horatius Redi- 
 vivus, and that some modern Latin poetry were shown 
 to him. He would probably observe on some words or 
 
390 WRITINGS OF MILTON. 
 
 phrases, that no doubt they were to be found in Terence 
 and Plautus, but that they had become quite antiquated 
 in his time ; others he knew to be in Catullus and Lu- 
 cretius, but that he and his contemporaries would not 
 have ventured to use them. Of others he would profess 
 himself to be utterly ignorant, though perhaps he would 
 not take on him to assert that they were bad, — these 
 came from Juvenal, Statins, and others, down to Clau- 
 dian ; finally, he might light on some which he w^ould 
 pronounce to be absolute solecisms and barbarisms, — 
 namely, modern ideas and phraseology in a Latin dress. 
 
 In fact, modern Latin poetry is an exotic, a mere hot- 
 house plant, which evermore reminds us that it does not 
 spring from the soil. He that writes it is always held 
 down by secret chains, his wings are clipped, and he can 
 never soar into the regions of poetic space. Spite of 
 himself he must be a mere ape of the ancients, for he 
 may be called on to give his authority for every term he 
 employs. Look at Milton's lines on the deaths of the 
 Bishops of Winchester and Ely, and compare them with 
 those on the Marchioness of Winchester, written about 
 the same time, and the difference between compositions 
 in a living and in a dead language will be apparent. 
 How fortunate was it that he did not write his Ode on 
 the Nativity in Latin ; the same ideas and sentiments 
 might no doubt have been there, but how differently 
 expressed ! Beautiful as Milton's Latin poetry must be 
 confessed to be, it probably does not find, even among 
 those famihar with the language, one reader for fifty 
 readers of his English poetry, and few perhaps ever 
 read his Latin poems without a secret wish that he had 
 written them in English. 
 
 We are, it must be again confessed, no friends to 
 
Milton's latin writings. 391 
 
 modern Greek and Latin poetry ; and it is to us a matter 
 of sincere regret that in our systems of education so 
 much time should be devoted to it that we think might 
 be far better employed. Possibly Milton himself was of 
 our opinion, for he has not included it in his plan of 
 education. Prose composition in both languages, if not 
 carried too far,* we deem to be of advantage ; what we 
 disapprove of is, making all, without exception, whether 
 favoured by nature or not with poetic power, writers of 
 Greek and Latin verses. The usual reason given is, that 
 it makes them understand better, and relish more highly, 
 the classic poetry. Of this we doubt ; and if it be the 
 truth, why not apply the same principle to their own lan- 
 guage ? why not make them writers of blank verse and 
 Spenserian stanzas ? In the French Alexandrines and 
 the Italian Terza and Ottava Rima there are niceties and 
 peculiarities which require to be understood in order to 
 enjoy them fully, and yet we have never heard of any 
 master setting his pupils to compose them. There is 
 further, we think, this evil, that from so much impor- 
 tance being attached to mere versification, a trifling turn 
 of mind, and a habit of attending more to form than .to 
 substance, is apt to be engendered.! We would say 
 then, let the structure of the hexameter and the other 
 forms of classic verse be carefully taught in schools, and 
 let prizes, if it be deemed advisable, be ofiered in the 
 universities, as is the custom, for poetic compositions in 
 
 * Latin prose is now little used among us, except for inscriptions 
 and for notes on the Classics, both of which are better in English. 
 
 t When Burke said vSctigal, there was a general laugh in the House 
 of Commons at his ignorance of quantity, — they meant accent ; for 
 there was probably not one there who woidd not have pronounced mos, 
 dos, and I>lc nuKi Damoetas as Dick my high Damoetas. How many 
 were there among them who imderstood the Classics as well as Burke P 
 
392 WRITINGS OF MILTON. 
 
 the classic languages, and those who have the requisite 
 natural powers will soon appear, as is the case with prizes 
 for English composition ; but do not, for the sake of a fa- 
 voured few, torture and waste the time of hundreds to 
 whom nature has refused poetic talent. It is Latin verse 
 that we have chiefly in view ; for such are the niceties of 
 the use of cases, tenses, and prepositions in Greek, that 
 we regard it as almost impossible for a modern — it was 
 probably equally so for an ancient Roman — to write in 
 that language so as to escape the charge of barbarism 
 from an old Athenian.* 
 
 Milton, as we have seen, would have Latin pronounced 
 in the Italian manner. With respect to the vowels, we 
 quite agree with him ; for what can be more absurd than 
 to pronounce amare, for instance, one way in Latin and 
 another in Italian ? As to the consonants, it is of less 
 importance ; for Cicero is as near as Chichero to the name 
 which the Romans pronounced KiJcero. There is how- 
 ever one sound which we have introduced, and which 
 Milton's delicate ear abhorred in any language, that we 
 would fain see banished, namely, that of sh, for c and 
 t before i ; as raisho, a dissyllable, for ratio, a trisyllable, 
 with t hard. We surely also might pay some attention 
 to quantity, and not pronounce mos, ros, dos, like moss, 
 ross, doss, to say nothing of such a monster as mlhl {my 
 higli) for the Latin mihi, where h merely serves by way of 
 diaeresis, as in the French trahir. We seem also to make 
 it a rule to pronounce the vowel of the antepenultimate 
 long when it is accented, 
 
 * We must however inform the advocates for the present system that 
 we were not educated on it ; so they may apply to us, if they will, the 
 fable of the fox that lost his tail. Still we think we have as keen a 
 relish as any of them, for the poetry of Greece and Eome. 
 
MILTON*S LATIN WRITINGS. 393 
 
 By our manner of reading Greek and Latin verse, we 
 actually lose nearly all the poetic melody. In hexameters 
 and sapphics, no doubt the two last feet frequently retain 
 their proper melody in our mode of reading, but it is lost 
 almost everyw^here else. Most certainly the Greeks and 
 Romans read their verses metrically, that is, with the ac- 
 cent on the first syllable of the dactyl and trochee, on the 
 last of the anapaest and the iamb. This is quite clear, 
 from their lyric poetry, the Odes of Horace for example, 
 for the accents must fall regularly in verses which are to 
 be sung. French verse presents a parallel : the accents 
 in songs are different from those of the same words as 
 ordinarily pronounced ; and this seems to have been the 
 case with all French verse, even as low down as Marot, 
 as it w^as in the Provencal, and to a less extent in Spanish 
 and Italian. It is also the system of our own old verse, 
 as may be seen in Chaucer, Gower, and others, down to 
 the sixteenth century. 
 
 We will give one line from the ^neis as an example. 
 Virgil undoubtedly read as follows : — 
 
 Mc's erat Hesperio 'n Latio, quae maxiir.a !Roma. 
 
 An English scholar would probably read as follows : — 
 
 M6s e'rat Hespe'rio in La'sHo, etc. 
 
 By changing the quantity and the accents, the melody 
 of the first four feet, it is plain, is quite lost. Must not 
 then the melody which we think we find in alcaics, iam- 
 bics, and other forms, be almost purely imaginary? at 
 least, be very different from what the ancients found in 
 them ? In Greek we make matters still worse, for neglect- 
 ing the printed accents which are before our eyes, we in- 
 troduce the Latin system of placing the accent on the 
 
394 WRITINGS or milton. 
 
 penultimate when long, and of never placing it on the last 
 syllable.* 
 
 We will not say that Milton was so negligent of quan- 
 tity as to say moss for mos, etc., but as we have shown 
 above, he certainly did not read Latin poetry metrically. 
 We doubt if any one did in his time. Bentley, we know, 
 scouted the very idea of that mode of reading it. It has 
 however been revived in Germany, and, we believe, is 
 used by all the scholars of that country. 
 
 * We can answer for ourselves that before we learned to read metri- 
 cally, we often thought that the Greek tragedies might just as well have 
 been printed as prose. E-ead the fine anapsests with which the Persse 
 begins in the modern manner, and then metrically, and mark the diiFer- 
 ence ! We once got a Greek to read some of Homer for us ; he read it 
 by the printed accents, and of course we could not discern even a trace 
 of metric harmony. Yet he thought it very fine. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO PAEADISE LOST, 
 
397 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST, 
 
 ORIGIN OF PARADISE LOST. 
 
 It is probable that Milton early conceived the idea of writing 
 an epic poem : but we have no means of ascertaining the ex- 
 act time, as there is no hint of such a design in anything he 
 wrote previous to his setting out on his travels. The first 
 intimation we get of such a project is in his verses to Manso, 
 at Naples, in 1639. 
 
 O miki si mea sors talem concedat amicum, 
 Plioebseos decorasse viros qui tarn bene norit, 
 Siquando indigenes revocabo m carmina reges, 
 Arturumque etiam sub terris beUa moventem ! 
 Aut dieam invictse sociah foedere mensse 
 Magnanimos heroas ; et, o modo spiritus adsit, 
 Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges, etc. 
 
 From this it appears that, inspired by Spenser and the ro- 
 mantic poets of Italy, the epic which he meditated was to be 
 of a romantic cast, with Arthur the British prince for its hero. 
 From the following passage in the Epitaphium Damonis, writ- 
 ten soon after his return to England, it would seem that the 
 poem was to contain all the principal events of British his- 
 tory, from the landing of Brute till the time of Arthur, per- 
 haps by way of narrative or episode, as in the song of a bard, 
 or something of that kind. 
 
 Ipse ego Dardanias E-utupina per sequora puppes 
 Picam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogenise, 
 
398 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Brenmimque Arviragnmque duces, priscumque Belinum, 
 Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos ; 
 Turn gravidam Arturo, fatali fraude, logernen, 
 Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlois arma, 
 Merlini dolus. 
 
 At the conclusion of his piece Of Reformation in England, 
 published in 1641^ occur the following words : — "Then amidst 
 the hymns and hallelujahs of saints_, some one may perhaps be 
 heard offering at high strains in new and lofty measures, to 
 sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and marvellous judge- 
 ments in this land throughout all ages." Here again there is 
 an evident allusion to a poem on a British theme. He re- 
 turns to the subject in his Reason of Church Government, 
 published in the same year, where he still keeps to the idea of 
 selecting his subjects from British history, but is doubtful if 
 he shall treat them in the regular or the irregular epic form, 
 or in the tragic or the lyric manner."^ After this we hear 
 nothing more of his poetic designs till the appearance of the 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 Had Milton remained in the peaceful seclusion of Horton, 
 and had the folly of the King and Laud not raised the flames 
 of civil and religious dissension in the realm, we may perhaps 
 assume — ^judging from the cheerful and romantic tone of the 
 poetry which proceeded from the shades of that rural retreat 
 — that the lyre of the poet would have been tuned to British 
 themes, and Arthur have renewed his wars in strains infinitely 
 beyond any that have ever been, or probably ever will be, 
 devoted to them ; and a poem might have appeared vying with 
 the Faery Queen in romantic beauty, and far exceeding it in 
 dignity and sublimity. Mr. Mitford has indulged his imagi- 
 nation in the following conception of what such a poem might 
 have contained. 
 
 We should have had tales of chivalrous emprise " of gentle knights 
 that pricked along the plain," the cruelty of inexorable beauty, and the 
 achievements of unconquerable love. Its scenes would not have been 
 laid in the bowers of Paradise, or by " the thunderous throne " of 
 heaven, nor where the wings of the cherubim fan the mercy-seat ; but 
 
 * See above, page 352. 
 
ORIGIN OF PARADISE LOST. 399 
 
 amid royal halls, in the palaces of magicians and islands of enchant- 
 ment. Instead of the serpent, with hairy mane and eye of carbuncle, 
 gliding among the myrtle-thickets of Eden, we should have jousts and 
 tournaments, the streaming of gonfalons, the glitter of dancing plumes, 
 the wailing of barbaric trumpets and the sound of silver clarions ; bat- 
 tles fiercer than those of Fontarabia and fields more gorgeous than that 
 of the Cloth of Gold. What crowds of pilgrims and palmers should we 
 not have beheld journeying to and fro with sheU and staff of ivory, 
 filling the port of Joppa with their gaUeys ? What youthful warriors, 
 the flower of British chivalry, should we not have seen caparisoned 
 and in quest of the holy Sangreal? The world of reahty and the 
 world of vision would have been equally exhausted to supply the ma- 
 terials ; the odours would have been wafted from the " weeping woods " 
 of Araby ; the dazzling mirrours would have been of soHd diamond ; 
 and the flowers would have been amaranths from the Land of Faery. 
 Every warrior would have been clothed in pyropus and in adamant. 
 We should have watched in battle, not the celestial sword of Michael, 
 but the enchanted Caliburn ; we should have have had, not the sorrows 
 of Eve and the fall of Adam, but the loves of Angelica and the exploits 
 of Arthur. ' 
 
 Whether such would or would not have been the aspect 
 which the poem would have presented^ we cannot pretend to 
 say. But it would, in all probability, have been something 
 widely different from anything we of these later days can ima- 
 gine. At all events such a creation was not to come into 
 existence. From the moment when Milton descended into the^ 
 arena of theologic conflict, there was for him an end of ro- 
 mance, and he would have turned with abhorrence from any 
 theme unconnected with the solemn doctrines and deep ques- 
 tions of the prevailing system of theology. The gay and 
 cheerful tone of the poetry of Horton no more reappears till 
 it becomes necessary for aiding in the creation of the garden 
 of Eden ; even his lightest effusions now breathe a solemn tone ; 
 religion pervades every region of his mind. 
 
 As we have observed above, it is impossible now to ascer- 
 tain when he first conceived the idea of making the Fall of 
 Man the subject of a poem. Aubrey tells us that he com- 
 menced Paradise Lost in 1658; but he must have had the 
 subject in contemplation long before that time. It is also un- 
 certain whether he at first intended it to be an epic poem or a 
 
400 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 tragedy. Phillips tells us it was to have been the latter ; and 
 he mentions some verses of the commencement of Satan's 
 address to the sun in the fourth book of Paradise Lost, 
 " which/^ he says, " several years before the poem was begun, 
 were shown to him, and some others, as designed for the very 
 beginning of this tragedy." This account, we think, may be 
 correct in the main; for in the Cambridge MS. there are two 
 plans of a tragedy, or mystery, on the Fall of Man, in the se- 
 cond and more perfect of which " Lucifer appears after his 
 overthrow, bemoans himself, seeks revenge upon Man," and 
 this, though not the " very beginning of this tragedy," is Lu- 
 cifer's first appearance, and nothing could be more appropriate 
 than that address to the sun. It is probable however that the 
 poet changed his mind before he had made any progress in the 
 drama, for if he had written any portion of the dialogue, it is 
 likely that he would, in his usual manner, have preserved it. 
 
 Milton, in the commencement of his poem, says that his 
 song will pursue 
 
 Things unattempted yet in prose or rime, 
 and when we consider his upright, honourable character, we 
 may be certain that he would not have used such language if 
 he were conscious of being under obligation to Grotius, and to 
 numerous inferior poets of Italy and other countries, for much 
 of his materials. No doubt he had read the Adamus Exsul of 
 Grotius, and he may have read some of the other poems which 
 the toiling industry of his critics has brought to light ; but on 
 looking to the passages which they adduce as those which he 
 imitated, no one skilled in the philosophy of mind will discern 
 anything beyond mere coincidence of thought or expression ; 
 very different from the appearance presented when he employs 
 an image or expression which had remained in his mind from 
 the perusal of Homer, Virgil, Spenser, or any other poet with 
 whose works we know him to have been familiar. Like every 
 great poet, he employed the language and imagery which his 
 mind presented, without anxiously inquiring how they came 
 there. Poets of the higher order are not very solicitous about 
 the appearance of originality ; Shakespeare, for example, often 
 
ORIGIN OF PARADISE LOST. 401 
 
 merely versifies the chronicle or tale from which he derived his 
 subject. 
 
 Voltaire was the first to bring a charge of plagiarism against 
 the author of Paradise Lost. He says that he " saw at Flo- 
 rence a comedy called Adamo, written by one Andreini^ a 
 player, and dedicated to Mary de Medicis, Queen of France." 
 He adds, that " Milton pierced through the absurdity of that 
 performance to the hidden majesty of the subject, which being 
 altogether unfit for the stage, yet might be — for the genius of 
 Milton, and his only — the foundation of an epic poem." Joseph 
 Warton and Hayley were both of opinion that Milton had read 
 this drama, of which the latter gives an analysis at the end of 
 his Life of Milton. We are of a totally difierent opinion, from 
 the circumstance that there is not the slightest resemblance 
 between its structure and economy and those of the dramas 
 which Milton projected on the same subject; and surely if he 
 did not follow it in a drama, he would not have done so in his 
 heroic poem. In fact, we need only refer the reader to the 
 extracts from the Adamo given by Hayley, and leave it to his 
 own judgement to decide whether Milton was under obligation 
 to that drama, or merely has some very slight coincidences 
 with it. 
 
 At length, in the middle of the last century, appeared the 
 notorious William Lauder, a Scot, with learning to some ex- 
 tent, but utterly devoid of principle. He published an Essay 
 on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns, the object of 
 which was to show that Milton had borrowed largely from 
 divers Scotch, Dutch, and German ^vriters of Latin poems on 
 subjects akin to the Paradise Lost; and to make good his 
 charge, in the extracts which he gave, he did not scruple to in- 
 terpolate verses of his own manufacture, or taken from Hogg's 
 Latin translation of Milton's poem. Dr. Johnson, whose cri* 
 tical acumen was blunted by hostility to Milton, espoused the 
 cause of Lauder warmly ; but he afterwards renounced him, 
 when Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Douglas, Lauder's own country- 
 man, had exposed the fraud. 
 
 The industry of various critics and scholars has produced a 
 
 2d 
 
402 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 goodly list of poems, chiefly Italian, to which Milton might 
 have been under obligation; for it seems to have been deemed 
 necessary to deduct as much as possible from his originality. 
 The most remarkable is the discovery of Mr. Sharon Turner, 
 the historian of the Anglo-Saxons, that Milton may have de- 
 rived much of his matter from the "venerable Cedmon^s^^ Pa- 
 raphrase of Genesis. Of all hypotheses this is the most absurd. 
 We have no certain evidence of Milton's knov/ledge of Anglo- 
 Saxon, and Cedmon's Paraphrase was published by Junius for 
 the first time in 1655, after Milton had been for some time 
 totally blind, and consequently could only become acquainted 
 with such books as his family and friends could read to him, 
 and such was not likely to have been an Anglo-Saxon poem, 
 which the editor himself did not perfectly imderstand. 
 
 Paradise Lost was first published in ten books, the same 
 number as those of the epic of Portugal, Os Lusiadas. But he 
 afterwards extended the number to twelve, corresponding with 
 that of those of the iEneis, by dividing the seventh and tenth 
 books, and adding a few lines, to form the commencement of 
 the new books. 
 
 The first edition of Paradise Lost is very correctly printed, 
 and most carefully punctuated. As this last, as the editions of 
 his Poems prove, was a matter to which Milton himself did not 
 much attend, the praise of correctness must be due to the per- 
 son who read the proofs. This, we presume, was his nephew, 
 Edward Phillips, who, as we have seen, had a good deal of ex- 
 perience in these matters. A tolerably fixed system of ortho- 
 graphy seems also to have been adopted ; for in the errata we 
 meet with " for hundreds r. hunderds, for we r. wee" We in- 
 variably find battel, cattel ; taste, etc. have always the final e, 
 except in the second line of the poem. Harald and sovran 
 (Italian forms) seem to be the poet's own orthography. Their 
 is always spelt thir ; star, war, and far, starr, warr, farr. In 
 he, she, we, me, when emphatic, the vowel is doubled. 
 
403 
 
 PARADISE REGAINED. 
 
 We have seen above* what was the origin of this poem. It 
 may therefore have been composed in the summer and autumn 
 while Milton was at Chalfont St. Giles ; but as it contains lit- 
 tle more than two thousand lines, and as the poet, according 
 to the testimony of his widow, would pour forth twenty or 
 thirty verses at a time, and so could easily have composed it 
 in the space of three months, we need not depart from the 
 theory of his vein flowing most freely between the autumnal 
 and the vernal equinox, and may suppose it to have been com- 
 posed during that period, either in Buckinghamshire or after 
 his return to London. 
 
 Nothing would seem to be clearer than that he never thought 
 of the subject till it was started by Elwood. All idea therefore 
 of his having sought for materials in any not very accessible 
 source — especially if he composed it in the country — would 
 seem to be excluded ; yet Mr. Todd, with that unhappy pro- 
 pensity which he had for making the great poet a kind of cen- 
 toist, observing that Bale had published in 1538, "^ Brefe 
 Comedy or EnteHude concernynge the Temtacyon of our Lorde 
 and Saver Jesus Christ by Sathan in the Desart,' adds, that 
 " Milton might have noticed this ancient drama." Elsewhere 
 he says, '' perhaps the Italian Muse might afford a hint," and 
 he mentions an Italian poem named La Humanit^l del Figli- 
 volo di Dio, in ten books, by Theofilo Folengo, printed at Ve- 
 nice in 1533, of v/hich the fourth book treats of the Tempta- 
 tion, and from which he would seem to intimate Milton may 
 
 See p. 64. 
 
 2 D 2 
 
404 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 have derived the idea of making the angels spread a banquet 
 for onr Lord after his trials. He hints then at other obscure 
 Italian poems, and at Ross's Latin Christiados, as sources from 
 which Milton may have derived some of his ideas. 
 
 We certainly will not venture to assert that Milton might 
 not one time or other have met with Bale's comedy, and read 
 it ; but the resemblances which Mr. Todd traces are very few 
 indeed, and such as would only affect a critic of his calibre. 
 \To Milton's logical mind, when brooding over the hint 
 thrown out by Elwood, it must have appeared that as the 
 cause of the loss of Paradise was the first Adam's succumb- 
 ing under the temptation of Satan, the mode of its recovery 
 must be the triumphant resistance to his arts and wiles by 
 the second Adam. As therefore the only account of any temp- 
 tation of our Lord by Satan is that in the wilderness after 
 his baptism, in Milton's view the victory was then gained, the 
 power of Satan was broken for ever, and all the subsequent 
 deeds of our Lord were in order to secure his conquest and 
 establish his empire. Whether this reasoning was correct or 
 not, we leave to the decision of theologians. What is per- 
 haps more decisive is, that from the words of our Lord to the 
 penitent thief, " This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," 
 Milton must have inferred that it had been already regained."^ 
 The model which Milton set before him for this poem was 
 the Book of Job, that greatest production of the Semitic 
 Muse. He regarded it as being a " brief model "f of the epic 
 form of poetry, while in truth it is dramatic, and thus secretly 
 recommended itself to Milton's mind, which, as we have seen, 
 was highly dramatic also. The Paradise Regained consists 
 therefore mainly of dialogue, of debates between our Lord 
 and the Tempter ; and the chief use of the narrative parts is 
 to connect the dialogues, and to adorn the poem with the 
 splendour and beauties of description. It is therefore absurd 
 
 * " For Te Deum has a smatch of Limbus Patrum ; as if Christ had not 
 'opened the kingdom of heaven' before he had ' overcome the sharpness of 
 death.' " — Apology for Smeciymnuus. 
 
 t See above, page 352. 
 
PARADISE REGAINED. 405 
 
 to compare this poem with Paradise Lost, — we might almost 
 as well compare Samson Agonistes with it, — for it is clearly of /^ 
 quite a different kind ; but in its kind as perfect as that great 
 poem. It was, for example, the opinion of Wordsworth that 
 " Paradise Regained was the most perfect in execution of any- 
 thing written by Milton ^^^"^ and Coleridge also thus expressed 
 himself on the same subject : — ^^ Readers would not be disap- 
 pointed in this latter poem, if they proceeded to a perusal of 
 it with a proper preconception of the kind of interest intended 
 to be excited in that admirable work. In its kind it is the 
 most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in 
 interest — being in its essence didactic — to that other sort in 
 which instruction is conveyed more effectually, because less 
 directly, in connection with stronger and more pleasurable 
 emotions, and thereby in a closer affinity with action. But 
 might we not as rationally object to an accomplished woman's 
 conversing, however agreeably, because it happened that we 
 had received a keener pleasure from her singing to the harp V'\ 
 
 We have quoted the opinions of these two critics because 
 they were themselves poets of a high order, and their deci- 
 sions are therefore entitled to the utmost attention. It thus 
 appears plain why, as Phillips says, Milton, when it was ac- 
 counted inferior to Paradise Lost, "could not bear with patience 
 any such thing when related to him." He knew well that it 
 was as perfect, if not more so, in its kind, as that wonderful 
 poem. In fact, blemishes have been found, and some with 
 justice, in Paradise Lost, but none, to our knowledge, in Para- ? 
 disc Regained. Even Johnson bestows on it the meed of his 
 unalloyed praise, and observes that " had it been written, not 
 by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and 
 received universal praise.^' 
 
 It is a strange notion taken up by some critics that the 
 versification of this poem is inferior to that of Paradise Lost. 
 Jortin says, it has not the same "harmony of numbers;" 
 Todd, that " it wants the variety and animation that so emi- 
 
 * Life, vol. ii. p. 311. 
 
 t Lectures on Sliakspeare, etc., ii. 121. 
 
406 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 nently distinguish the numbers of Paradise Lost ;" and Sym- 
 mons speaks of its " general deficiency in the charm of num- 
 bers." Probably it was style and language they meant when 
 they spoke of numbers. The language is no doubt less figu- 
 rative and less brilliant in general, but it is at the same time 
 more fluent, less inverted, and somewhat less Latinized than 
 that of the greater poem ; while when occasion offbrs — as in 
 the description of the night-storm, of the banquet, of the 
 Roman and Parthian empires — it rises fully to the level of 
 its predecessor. As to the numbers or versification, they 
 could not well be altered, unless Milton had chosen to go back 
 to the broken verse of Peele and the elder poets ; the system, 
 the sweep, the current, which distinguishes good blank verse, 
 is there as fully as in any poem written by Milton or by any 
 other poet. 
 
 It must however be confessed that Paradise Regained never 
 enjoyed, and we may venture to add, probably never will en- 
 joy, the same popularity as Paradise Lost ; and the reason is 
 a very simple one. There are very few readers who can relish 
 pure reasoning and calm well- sustained dialogue, as compared 
 with those who are delighted by sublime or brilliant descrip- 
 tion, and by various, rapid, and animated action. Paradise 
 Regained is less read than Paradise Lost for the same reason 
 that the book of Job has not one reader for twenty readers of 
 the Apocalypse. It may be placed among the works of our 
 poet with Lycidas ; and that higher order of minds which en- 
 joys the one will enjoy the other. 
 
 We would make one remark on this poem which shows the 
 geographic ignorance of Milton^s time. The scene of the 
 Temptation is evidently intended to be the great Arabian 
 desert ; for Satan says : — 
 
 Others of some note, . 
 As story tells, have trod this wilderness ; 
 The fugitive bond-woman with her son, 
 Outcast JSTebaioth, yet found here relief 
 By a providing angel ; all the race 
 Of Israel here had famished had not God 
 Rained from heaven manna, and that prophet bold, 
 
PARADISE REGAINED. 407 
 
 Native of Thebez, wandering here was fed 
 Twice by a voice, inviting him to eat, — ii. 306. 
 
 Now, to reach this desert from the banks of the Jordan, it 
 would be necessary to take a journey of very many miles, and 
 the shortest way, we believe, would be through the city of 
 Jerusalem. But in the view of the narrators of the life of 
 our Lord, it was not this desert that was the scene of the 
 Temptation, but that of the ^ Arabah, the valley of the Jordan, 
 where John was baptizing,^ which has at ail times been a wil- 
 derness, and to which view tradition has been true in fixing 
 on Mount Quarantania, which overhangs it, as that from the 
 summit of which the Tempter showed our Lord all the king- 
 doms of the earth and their glory. 
 
 * See Mark i. 3. 
 
408 
 
 MILTON AND DANTE. 
 
 PAEADISE LOST AND LA DIVINA COMMEDIA. 
 
 Sublimity and vigour being assumed as the justest criterions 
 of high poetic genius^ Paradise Lost constitutes Milton one of 
 the triumvirate of greatest poets^ after Shakespeare, who dwells 
 alone in separate glory as the mightiest poetic mind that na- 
 ture has ever produced. Taken in order of time, the trium- 
 virate is composed of ^schylus, Dante, and Milton. Our 
 omission of Homer may cause surprise ; but much of the fame 
 of Homer is merely traditional, and arose when he was re- 
 garded as the sole author of the poems that go under his 
 name. It seems to be now established by just principles of 
 criticism, that the Ilias and the Odyssey are the productions 
 of diflPerent poets, and that the former is a composite and not 
 an organic whole, of which possibly not more than one-half 
 belongs to the poet whom we name Horner.^ His claim there- 
 fore to be placed in the same class with Milton and Dante 
 becomes somewhat dubious. But at the same time, every 
 person of taste will gladly acknowledge his fire, his anima- 
 tion, his picturesqueness, his fine descriptive power, his skilful 
 delineation of character, his correct expression of sentiment 
 and feelings, his ease and perspicuity of narrative, in fine, his 
 greatness as a poet, though still, we think, in some degree in- 
 ferior to those above enumerated. 
 
 It is needless for us to impose on ourselves the task of ana- 
 lysing Paradise Lost, and displaying its perfections ; for that 
 has been the task of critics, from Addison down to Channing 
 
 * See our Mythology of Greece and Italy, page 494, 3rd edit. 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 409 
 
 and Macaulay. Neither will we M our pages with quotations 
 from their criticisms. One quotation however we will make, 
 because it is one which must be inaccessible to most readers, 
 and because it is the opinion of a man who was a true poet 
 himself. We mean Esaias Tegner, bishop of Vexio, in Swe- 
 den, and author of the Frithiofs Saga, perhaps the most beau- 
 tiful poem of the nineteenth century. In his panegyric on 
 Count Oxenstjerna, when he comes to speak of that noble- 
 man's translation of Paradise Lost, he thus expresses himself 
 respecting the original author : — 
 
 Milton, with his sublime genius, is, in a certain point of view, the most 
 irregular of all poets. For he not only departs from rules, but he casts 
 them down with the strength of a giant, and builds up a new poetic 
 world on their ruins. For this reason, his wonderful poem cannot be 
 assigned a place in any of the departments which are usually regarded 
 as the only possible ones for poetic creations. He takes at once into 
 his great poetic ocean the whole of the four paradisal rivers of poetry, 
 the epic, the lyric, the didactic, and the dramatic. It has therefore been 
 justly observed, that the proper object of the poem is didactic, as the 
 poet will, by means of it, "justify the ways of God to men." It is 
 epic merely by the greatness of the action and the episodes respecting 
 the war in heaven. But the action itself is dramatic, both in design and 
 execution, and the main interest from beginning to end dwells about a 
 single great tragic character, the fallen archangel. Finally, the poem 
 is lyric, not only in single passages, but even in general, in its whole 
 tone and expression. Thus then the Paradise Lost, in a poetic point of 
 view, forms a species in itself, without a model, and as yet without a 
 copy ; but to think of rejecting it on this account would be to sacrifice 
 the just rights of genius to the crotchets of the schools. The power 
 with which this wonderful poem seizes on every mind of a deeper 
 and more serious cast, only proves the poverty of our ordinary poetic 
 theories. 
 
 This brief criticism appears to us to be extremely just ; for 
 Paradise Lost does, in fact, contain all these kinds of poetry. 
 If any form prevailed most in Milton's mind, we think it was 
 the dramatic; that is, such as it appeared on the theatre at 
 Athens ; and had Milton flourished in ancient Greece, this is 
 the species of poetry to which he would have devoted himself, 
 equalling, as we have already said, ^schylus in sublimity, and 
 
410 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 surpassing him in amenity; equalling Sophocles in amenity 
 and dignity, and surpassing him in sublimity and vigour, and 
 not inferior to him in skilful arrangement. From tins turn of 
 the poet's mind, Paradise Lost is the most dramatic of heroic 
 poems ; for everything that it was possible to throw into speech 
 and dialogue has been set forth under these forms ; Paradise 
 Regained we need hardly say is almost entirely dramatic. 
 ^ Hence, too, it results that the characters in his great poem 
 are accurately drawn and well preserved. Among his good 
 angels the distinction is as great as was possible where all are 
 equally good; Michael is dignified, Raphael affable, Gabriel 
 prudent and circumspect, Abdiel faithful and zealous. The 
 evil angels, as varieties of evil, present stronger differences; 
 Moloch is impetuous and furious, Beelzebub deeply malignant 
 but cool and pmdent, Belial loose and lascivious, Mammon ^ 
 low-minded and grovelling. But his great creation is Satan,*'^ 
 the " Archangel ruined,'^ ambitious, proud, revengeful, yet not 
 utterly devoid of pity and remorse; to a certain extent the 
 iEschylian Prometheus, but a Prometheus justly punished, as 
 his sufferings result from guilt. Finally, his human person- 
 ages are not presented clad in theologic virtues and graces, 
 but such as imagination would fondly conceive the solitary 
 dwellers of a blissful paradise to have been, with the inno- 
 cence of children who have known no sin and seen no evil, 
 joined with that degree of reason and knowledge which we 
 must suppose suitable to personages of full growth of person 
 and maturity of intellect. 
 
 Milton has also admitted personifications into his poem, a 
 liberty exercised by poets of all ages and countries; to him 
 the appearance of Wisdom as a person in the proem to the 
 Proverbs would have appeared a sufficient authority. He has 
 Chaos and his cortege animating the vast region of anarchy 
 through which Satan pursues his course in search of the new- 
 made World, and as keepers of the gates of Hell he stations 
 Sin and her offspring Death. 
 
 This allegory, by which Sin is the offspring of Satan, sprung 
 from his head, and by him the mother of Death, is founded on 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 411 
 
 a passage in the epistle of St. James. Johnson pronounces 
 it to be '' undeniably faulty." He allows that Sin may be the 
 portress of hell, but says that when Death attempts to stop 
 the journey of Satan, the allegory is broken ; he also objects 
 to their building a real bridge through Chaos. It is not un- 
 likely, that Milton conceived the idea of placing Sin at the 
 gate of hell, from the passage of Scripture, where it is said, 
 " If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door/^ and the fallen 
 angels certainly had not done well. As Death cannot be se- 
 parated from Sin, he must be with her at the gate; and as it 
 is his nature to destroy, he must prepare to exercise his office 
 on any one who approaches. We are further to recollect, that 
 casting into the lake of fire is called the second death, which 
 may not have been without effect on the mind of the poet. 
 Sin, from her very nature, is disposed to transgress the com- 
 mand she had received, and so she opens the gates of hell to 
 let Satan forth on his errand of mischief. As for the build- 
 ing of the bridge, who can say positively, after considering 
 what we have said and shall say of Milton^ s idea of the reality 
 of his cosmology, that he may not have conceived a material 
 junction between hell and the exterior orb of the world ? and 
 the structure of it might legitimately be ascribed to Sin and 
 Death, as it was Sin that first gave the evil spirits entrance 
 into the world. 
 
 There is however one invention of Milton's of which we 
 cannot venture to undertake the defence. We mean the Para- 
 dise of Fools ; " a fiction," says Johnson, " not in itself ill- 
 imagined, but too ludicrous for its place." In fact, nothing 
 can exceed its incongruity and its discordance with the whole 
 scheme of the poem, in which everything seems intended to 
 be real. Here, on the contrary, we have apparently St. Peter 
 at heaven^ s wicket with his keys, and friars, with " all their 
 trumpery," passing through the celestial spheres and arriving 
 at the ascent to heaven, and such-like incongruities in abun- 
 dance. The only solution we can offer is, that Milton's imagina- 
 tion was early captivated by that ingenious fiction of Ariosto's, 
 in which he makes the moon to be the receptacle of all things 
 
412 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 lost on earth, and that he conld not resist the temptation to 
 imitate it, and at the same time to express his contempt for 
 the mummeries of the Church of Rome. 
 \ Johnson makes out an apparently strong case — at the time 
 a really strong one — against Milton for his confounding of 
 matter and spirit in his accounts of the actions of his good 
 and evil angels. But all, or nearly all, his objections vanish 
 now that we are aware of Milton^s materialistic ideas. The 
 representing Satan, however, who had been lurking in the 
 body of a toad, as armed with shield and spear when he re- 
 sumed his own form, seems to be an oversight of the poet's. 
 We may observe, in favour of this view, that there are nearly 
 two hundred lines intervening between his resumption of his 
 own shape and the mention of his arms. 
 N This critic also charges it as a fault on Milton that " Satan 
 is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradise, 
 and is suffered to go away unmolested.'^ But a combat would 
 have been unsuitable, and it was necessary that Satan should 
 be at large; and as Milton represents his angels as neither in- 
 fallible nor omniscient, there is some curiosity excited as to 
 how he will again contrive to elude the vigilance of Gabriel. 
 But probably the poet's chief reason for this early discovery of 
 Satan in Paradise was to give occasion to the mission of Ra- 
 phael in the following book, and his narrative of the rebellion 
 and war in heaven. 
 
 And God the Father turns a school-divine 
 is an objection made by Pope. Now, we should like to know 
 what other language, consistent with the theology of the time, 
 could the poet have put into the mouth of the Deity, for the 
 vindication of his ways; than that which we read. It is rather 
 remarkable that in the commencement of the Odyssey, the ruler 
 of Olympos is introduced vindicating his ways in a similar 
 manner. Foreknowlege and free-will will be for ever a source 
 of difficulty and incongruity to divines and philosophers, how 
 much more to poets ! 
 
 It is also objected to Milton, that he is fond of stringing to- 
 gether sonorous proper names. To this no doubt he was led 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 413 
 
 by his admiration for that practice in the ancient poets, and 
 they certainly form a stumbling-block to the unlearned. But 
 there are few, if any, who can completely understand Milton's 
 heroic poetry without the aid of a comment, and we will ven- 
 ture to assert that when one has fixed in his memory the posi- 
 tions of the places named by the poet, and some of the politi- 
 cal events connected with them, these very passages will ever 
 after be among those which he will peruse with the greatest 
 pleasure. We must repeat that Paradise Lost is one of those 
 poems which must be studied carefully and with the aid of 
 notes, to be fully understood and enjoyed. 
 
 The last objection which we will notice is, that it was not 
 judicious in the poet to give a narrative of future events in the 
 twelfth book, instead of continuing the splendid series of pic- 
 tures contained in the eleventh book. We doubtless join in 
 the regret that such should be the case, but we will not join 
 in making a charge out of it against the poet. The truth is, 
 that what we would desire is an impossibility. Let any one 
 go over in his mind the long series of events contained in this 
 book, and the account given in it of doctrines and opinions, 
 and he will see what a fruitless attempt it would have been to 
 present them in a succession of pictorial representations. At 
 least, they would have required the space of several books, and 
 would probably have wearied by their prolixity. 
 
 Paradise Lost is the last great heroic poem that the world 
 has seen, perhaps the last that it will ever see. Putting Dante's 
 poem aside for the present, we may assert that it is the only 
 successful poem on a religious subject, and it may be doubted 
 if religion supplies any other theme for poetry than that which 
 Milton selected. He was fortunate, too, in flourishing at the 
 time he did ; for though he might have written it had he lived 
 in the preceding century, he could hardly have done so in the 
 subsequent one, and most certainly not in the nineteenth. We 
 wiU justify this assertion. 
 
 An instinctive feeling seems to have led that true poet, Col- 
 lins, to express himself as follows : — 
 
 In scenes like these, which, daring to depart 
 From sober truth, are still to nature true. 
 
.414 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 And call forth fresh delight to fancy's view. 
 The heroic Muse employed her Tasso's art. 
 
 ***** 
 Prevailing poet ! whose nndoubting mind 
 Believed the magic wonders which he sang. 
 Hence at each sound imagination glows, 
 Hence at each picture vivid life starts here, 
 Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows ; 
 Melting it flows, pure, murmuring, strong, and clear, 
 And fills the impassioned heart, and wins the harmonious ear.* 
 
 His meaning evidently is, that the poet should, to a certain 
 extent, put faith in the creations of his genius; that is, be- 
 lieve that his fictions might have been realities. Thus in 
 Tasso's time, the belief in witchcraft and magic was so strong, 
 that few could venture to deny the possibility of the enchant- 
 ments of Armida and Ismeno ; and the poet might therefore, 
 in the ardour of composition, regard what he was inventing as 
 reality.t In like manner the Homeric poets believed in the 
 reality of Olympos and its inhabitants, while Virgil, we know, 
 had no such faith, and in consequence the deities of the ^neis 
 are tame and insipid as compared with those of the older poets. 
 Further, fully to enjoy the verses of the believing poet, the 
 reader must, like Collins, be able to cast aside, for the time, 
 his superior knowledge, and place himself in the degree of 
 light enjoyed by the poet whose work he is perusing. 
 
 To apply this to Milton. In his time, as we shall presently 
 see, the Ptolemaic astronomy was the prevalent one ; and the 
 trials for witchcraft, and condemnation of wretched old women 
 by grave and learned judges, for having held personal inter- 
 course with, and transferred their souls to, the Evil One, to- 
 gether with many other circumstances, prove the belief of the 
 age in the actual existence of evil spirits. J We are moreover 
 
 * As Collins had just before named Fairfax's translation, it is doubtful whe- 
 ther it is of him or of Tasso that he speaks in these last Hnes. For our pur- 
 pose however it does not matter which. By the way, those who would fully 
 e'.joy that poem should read it as an original poem, not as a translation. 
 
 t Tasso, in his insanity, actually believed himself to be persecuted by MagM. 
 
 X The Invisible World of the pious and learned Bishop Hall, written in 1651, 
 proves how deeply rooted the behef in evil spirits and their power and agency 
 was in those times, so that even the strongest and most highly cultivated intel- 
 lects were held in bondage by it. 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 415 
 
 to observe, that whenever Milton had lived, he would have 
 possessed all the knowledge of his age. 
 
 Now, with the seventeenth century, at least in England, ex- 
 pired the astronomy of Ptolemy. Had Milton then lived after 
 that century, he could not for a moment have believed in a 
 solid, globous world, enclosing various revolving spheres, with 
 the earth in the centre, and unlimited, unoccupied, undigested 
 space beyond. His local heaven and local hell would then have 
 become, if not impossibilities, fleeting and uncertain to a de- 
 gree which would preclude all firm, undoubting faith in their 
 existence ; for far as the most powerful telescopes can pierce 
 into space, there is nothing found but a uniformity of stars 
 after stars in endless succession, exalting infinitely our idea of 
 the Deity and his attributes, but enfeebling in proportion that 
 of any portion of space being his peculiar abode. Yf ere Mil- 
 ton in possession of this knowledge, is it possible that he could 
 have written the three first books of Paradise Lost ? We are 
 decidedly of opinion that he could not, for he never would have 
 written that of the truth of which he could not have persuaded 
 himself by any illusion of the imagination. It may be said 
 that he would have adapted his fictions to the present state of 
 astronomy. But he could not have done it ; such is the sub- 
 lime simplicity of the true system of the universe, that it is 
 quite unsuited to poetry, except in the most transient form. 
 
 In the eighteenth century, the absurd belief in witchcraft 
 had abandoned every intelligent mind ; the theory of the gods 
 of the Gentiles having been evil spirits had also been found to 
 rest on no solid foundation ; the demonic possessions of the 
 Gospels began to be regarded as the mere popular theories of 
 the causes of lunacy, epilepsy, and other diseases, to which 
 ideas our Lord and his apostles had adapted their language ; 
 Dr. Farmer wrote an essay, which was much admired, to prove 
 that the Temptation of our Lord was only in vision. Had 
 Milton been imbued, as he would have been, with these ideas, 
 the whole economy of his poem must have been disturbed and 
 altered. But it would have been still more so, in fact its whole 
 foundation would have been overturned, if fate had delayed him 
 till the present century, when Archbishop Lawrence introduced 
 
\ 
 
 416 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 into literature the Book of Enochs and when Coleridge could 
 write as follows, without any imputation on his faith in Christ. 
 
 He did not reflect that all these difficulties are attached to a mere 
 fiction, or, at the best, an allegory, supported by a few popular phrases 
 and figures of speech used incidentally or dramatically by the Evangelists, 
 and that the existence of a personal, intelhgent, evU being, the counter- 
 part and antagonist of God, is in direct contradiction to the most express 
 declarations of Holy Writ. " Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord 
 hath not done it?" Am. iii. 6. "I make peace and create evil." Is. 
 xlv. 7. This is the deep mystery of the abyss of God.* 
 
 And again, he queries if the personality of the Devil be not 
 " merely a Jewish dogma left undisturbed to fade away under 
 the increasing light of the Gospel.^^f 
 
 We have more than once observed that it is probable that 
 Milton may have thought himself describing and narrating 
 realities under the secret influence of the Holy Spirit ; and if 
 we would attain to the full enjoyment of his wonderful poem, 
 we must, as far as possible, endeavour to produce in ourselves 
 a similar frame of mind. We must also transfer ourselves 
 back to the seventeenth century, give faith to the appearances 
 and acts of evil spirits, view the earth as the centre of the uni- 
 verse, the heavenly bodies as revolving in solid spheres around 
 it, and the planets as shedding their influences sweet or malign; 
 we must even for a time sufier the gloom of Calvinism to cast 
 its dark shade over our intellect. This however is a difficult 
 operation; and few therefore will ever attain to the height of 
 
 * Lectures on Shakspeare, etc. ii. p. 135. It is an annotation on that part 
 of Robinson Crusoe in which Defoe sets liis hero to instruct Friday in reHgion. 
 From the history wliich he gives of the Devil, Coleridge pleasantly supposes 
 that Paradise Lost must have been bound up with one of Crusoe's Bibles. Dr. 
 Hitchcock, in his EeHgion of Greology (p. 78), makes the following just remarks : 
 — " The great English poet, in his Paradise Lost, has clothed this hypothesis [of 
 an entire change throughout aU organic nature] in a most graplaic and philoso- 
 phic dress ; and probably his descriptions have done more than the Bible to 
 give it currency. Indeed, could the truth be known, I fancy that on many 
 points of secondary importance the current theology of the day has been shaped 
 quite as much by the ingenious machinery of Paradise Lost as by the Scriptures ; 
 the theologians having so mixed up the ideas of Milton with those derived from 
 inspiration, that they find it difficult to distinguish between them." 
 
 t Ibid. p. 154. 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 417 
 
 the pleasure which Paradise Lost must have yielded to persons 
 of taste and poetic feeling at the time of its first appearance. 
 
 In conclusion^ we must also observe the advantage, in a 
 poetic sense, which Milton derived from his Arianism ; for had 
 he held his early opinions on the nature of the Son, and sought, 
 as he would have done, to avoid Tritheism, he would have fallen 
 into difficulties that he could hardly have surmounted. It may 
 be asked, how his opinions on this subject, which seem now so 
 plain, escaped observation so long, except by Warburton and a 
 few other of the more quick-sighted critics. The reply per- 
 haps is, that these are in reality the secret, unconscious views 
 of Christians in general, who have not had leisure or ability to 
 discern nice distinctions and weigh subtle reasonings. They 
 therefore felt no surprise when they met with views and sen- 
 timents coinciding with the secret impressions on their own 
 minds, and the more especially as they were always conveyed 
 in the language of Scripture. 
 
 When Macaulay, the most brilliant of essayists, in the fer- 
 vour of youth, with a mind filled with various knowledge and 
 teeming with rich imagery, made Milton the subject of one of 
 his earliest essays, he thought he discerned a resemblance be- 
 tween him and Dante, between Paradise Lost and the Divina 
 Commedia. At a later period, the same opinion was expressed 
 and the parallelism attempted to be traced by Mr. Hallam, 
 when treating of Paradise Lost. The result of our own stu- 
 dies of these poets and their works has been different, and we 
 will here endeavour to explain it. 
 
 " Milton,^^ says Mr. Macaulay, " was, like Dante, a states- 
 man and a lover ; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in 
 ambition and in love.^^ Now, from what we have seen above, 
 it is manifest that Milton was no Mejmin, that love never de- 
 ranged his reason, that his affection for Mary Powell was no 
 violent, absorbing passion, but a calm and tranquil feeling, which 
 never even impelled him to the composition of verses, and did 
 not prevent him from catching a glimpse of the young lady's 
 imperfections. In fine, we can only see in Milton's love the 
 proceeding of a virtiious man of domestic habits, who sought 
 
 2 E 
 
418 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 for the enjoyjnent of connubial felicity, and deemed,, but erro- 
 neously, that he would find it in a union with Mary PoAvell. 
 
 The wide-spread fame of Dante for his Beatrice is chiefly 
 founded on his enigmatic piece named the Vita Nuova, which 
 is regarded as a genuine and ingenuous narrative of his early 
 blown and early blighted affection. Let us then cast a glance 
 at this narrative, first premising that all we really know of the 
 domestic history of Dante is, that he was married, and, we 
 believe, at an early age, to a Florentine lady, named Gemma 
 Donati, by whom he had several children, but on what terms 
 or in what manner they lived is quite unknown. 
 
 The poet tells us that one day, toward the close of his ninth 
 year, in what place he does not say, he chanced to behold ^^the 
 glorious lady of his mind, who was called Beatrice by those 
 who did not know how to call her.'^ She was then just enter- 
 ing her ninth year, and was habited in a sanguine or crimson 
 dress. Three spirits within him then spoke Latin, and Love 
 took entire possession of his soul. He used thenceforth to go 
 constantly and endeavour to catch a sight of this angel. At 
 the end of his eighteenth year it befeU that he saw her in the 
 street, dressed in white, and accompanied by two ladies older 
 than herself, and she gave him a virtuous salute, the first time 
 he ever heard the sound of her voice ; and this, he observes, 
 was at the ninth hour of the day precisely. He retired forth- 
 with to his chamber, where he thought himself to sleep, in 
 which he had a marvellous vision. A cloud of the colour of 
 fire appeared in the chamber, in which he discerned a Lord of 
 awful aspect, but who seemed quite joyfid. He held in his 
 arms a naked person, asleep and covered with a sanguine cloth, 
 whom the slumbering poet recognized for the lady who had sa- 
 luted him the day before, and in his hand something burning, 
 which he said was the sleeper^s heart. He then awoke the 
 lady, and made her, though rather unwillingly, eat the burning 
 heart. Soon after, his joy was converted to weeping, and with 
 the lady in his arms he ascended to heaven. Dante awoke 
 then in great affliction, and setting himself to think, he found 
 that it was the fourth hour, i. e. the first of the nine last hours 
 
MILTON NND DANTE. 419 
 
 of the nighty that the vision had appeared to him. As at this 
 time he was skilled in poetry, he composed a sonnet narrating 
 his vision, which he sent to the principal poets of the time, 
 and in which he saluted all the Fedeli d' Amore, and besought 
 them to interpret his vision. They complied with his request ; 
 and the answers of three are extant, namely Guido Cavalcanti, 
 Cino da Pistoja, and Dante da Majana. 
 
 Here we may offer a remark. What can be more impro- 
 bable than the whole of the preceding narrative ? Is it at all 
 likely that a lad of eighteen would venture to write to a man 
 of the rank, the age, and the learning of Guido Cavalcanti, to 
 consult him on his dream ? and that he would reply with all 
 seriousness? But among these renowned poets and lovers is 
 Cino da Pistoja, who was born in 1270 ; and if, as is the general 
 belief, Dante was born in 1265, Cino could only have been 
 thirteen years of age when he was thus celebrated. Making 
 every allowance for southern precocity, this is hardly credible. 
 
 Some time after this event, the father of Beatrice died ; and 
 not long after, that angel herself departed, to the grief of her 
 lover. This took place, he informs us, on the first hour of the 
 ninth day of the month, " in that year of our indiction, that 
 is, of the years of our Lord, in which the perfect number was 
 completed nine times in that century in which she was placed 
 in the world;" i. e. in 1281, nine being what, as the square of 
 three, etc., was regarded as the perfect number. He tells us 
 that this number was friendly to her, to show that all the nine 
 movable heavens had conspired to generate her, and that she 
 was herself by similitude the number nine, the root of which 
 is nothing else but the adorable Trinity. The whole city was 
 widowed and despoiled of aU dignity, as it were, by her de- 
 parture, on which occasion Dante wrote a Latin letter to the 
 Princes of the Earth, commencing with the Quomodo sedet sola 
 civitas ! of the prophet Jeremiah. 
 
 Beatrice, as we see, died in 1281, and as the poet was born 
 in 1265, he could not be more than sixteen at the time; yet 
 he has just told us that he was eighteen when she first sa- 
 luted him. This the advocates for the reality of his love en- 
 
 2 E 2 
 
420 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 deavour to evade, by asserting without any, and contrary to all, 
 evidence, that ten is the perfect number. But again, the letter 
 of which he speaks, and which is still extant, was written in 
 1314, and addressed to the Italian cardinals, — to whom the 
 Pope had given the title of Principes Terrce, — to induce them 
 to try to bring the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon, 
 whither it had lately been removed. 
 
 Boccaccio, in his curious and enigmatic Life of Dante, tells 
 us that Beatrice was the daughter of Folco Portinari, one of 
 the principal citizens of Florence ; and by his wiU, dated Ja- 
 nuary 15, 1287, still extant, Folco leaves a legacy to his 
 daughter Beatrice, the wife of Simon de' Bardi ; so that it ap- 
 pears that all this excess of passion was for the wife of another 
 man, and we have a pendent to the tale of Petrarca and Laura. 
 As we have seen, Dante was probably himself married at the 
 time ; and our firm belief is, that he never had any passion 
 for Beatrice Portinari, either single or married, and that the 
 Beatrice of his poetry, like the Mandetta or Giovanna of Guido 
 Cavalcanti, the Selvaggia of Cino da Pistoja, the Laura of 
 Petrarca, the Fiammetta of Boccaccio, and so many other la- 
 dies, generally first met in Passion Week, and who all died 
 before their lovers, was a pure Donna di Mente, a personifica- 
 tion of the poet^s mind and its leading idea, the longed-for 
 reform in Church and State. 
 
 Having thus viewed the two poets as lovers, we should now 
 consider them as statesmen. But we do not think that this 
 term applies accurately to Milton. He was never engaged ac- 
 tively in politics ; he merely wrote some political treatises, 
 and his only business as Secretary of the Council seems to 
 have been to put into good Latin matters of which a draught 
 was probably given him in English. With Dante all was dif- 
 ferent. Even from the scanty notices we possess of his life, 
 we may learn that he was an ardent partisan in politics; he had 
 borne arms for and against his native city, had had a share 
 in her government, had been condemned by her, innocent and 
 unheard, to exile and confiscation of his property, and had 
 been on embassies to various courts and states. 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 421 
 
 We have only to look at the portraits of the two poets, the 
 one by Giotto, the other by Faithorn, to see the difference of 
 their characters. Of the former, Mr. Macaulay observes, with 
 his usual felicity, " No person can look on the features, noble 
 even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, the hag- 
 gard 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." In the portrait of Mil- 
 ton, taken when he was six years older than the age at which 
 Dante died, we discern seriousness, rendered probably more 
 severe by his want of vision, but the calmness and dignity re- 
 sulting from inward peace of mind, as of one whose thoughts 
 were habitually ^nigh sphered in heaven.^ Nothing there- 
 fore can be more unlike than the aspects of these two illus- 
 trious poets. The same difference we discern in their poetic 
 characters. In vigour they are alike ; in perception of beauty, 
 whether in the 'moral or the natural world, we cannot pro- 
 nounce either to be inferior ; yet perhaps the Terrestrial Pa- 
 radise is richer and more varied in natural charms in the Pa- 
 radise Lost than in the Purgatorio. In sublimity we give the 
 palm to the English, in tenderness and pathos to the Tuscan, 
 poet ; we do not think that Dante could have written the two 
 first books of Paradise Lost, we feel almost certain that Milton 
 could not have narrated the sad tale of Francesca da Rimini, or 
 the horrid fate of Count Ugolino, as they are narrated in the 
 Inferno. As strong feeling of one kind is usually united with 
 strong feelings of other kinds, so in Dante there is an inten- 
 sity and bitterness of satire of which the calmer nature and 
 more pious spirit of Milton was incapable. In vividness of 
 representation and graphic power we must award the prize to 
 Dante. His life was one of wandering, he had traversed the 
 plain, the vale and the mountain, he had probably dwelt in the 
 cot as well as the palace, and hence his similies and descrip- 
 tions, being actual transcripts from nature, present the objects 
 themselves to our senses. Milton, as we have already ob- 
 served, saw life and nature chiefly through the medium of 
 books, and hence we rarely meet in him with that accuracy of 
 
422 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 observation which distinguishes Dante. We would liken Mil- 
 ton to Raphael and those artists who^ taking their sketches 
 from nature^ give reins to imagination and produce pieces be- 
 yond what actual nature presents; while Dante may be in 
 general compared with those who are called Preraphaelites, who 
 copy nature faithfully and accurately, but rarely venture to go 
 beyond her. In fact, he usually presents to us as a simile, the 
 very object that he has copied. Milton also was quite devoid 
 of, and Dante possessed in the highest degree, that power by 
 which Swift makes us almost believe in the existence of Lil- 
 liput and Brobdingnag, when by seriousness of tone and man- 
 ner, minuteness and circumstantiality of narrative, and appa- 
 rent anxiety for accuracy, the writer would fain persuade us 
 of the actual truth of what he is telling us.* In learning, 
 Milton, of course, as born at a later period, and after the in- 
 vention of printing, had the superiority. We also think that 
 he may have possessed more dramatic power and talent than 
 the Italian poet, whose country has never signalized itself in 
 the higher departments of the drama. 
 
 We come now to the poems, and here also we fail to recog- 
 nize much similarity. In Paradise Lost, the poet, as we have 
 seen, related what he regarded as real events, and even his 
 descriptions of places ^beyond this visible diurnal sphere' 
 had in his conception a certain degree of reality. The Com- 
 media, on the contrary, — the true reason of its bearing that 
 title is probably all its personages being masked, — is confess- 
 edly allegoric, with a secret meaning in every line and almost 
 in every word. How then can we compare them ? Milton's 
 Heaven and Hell are real material places lying out in the 
 vast regions of space; the Inferno and Paradiso of Dante^ 
 though real too, but in a different sense, are, as will appear, on 
 this earth, and even in Italy. In structure and design the 
 poems also are quite unlike. We may compare Paradise Lost 
 to a magnificent temple of the Doric order, rich in material, 
 simple in design, intended to last for ages, inspiring each suc- 
 cessive generation with sentiments of piety and veneration ; 
 
 * This did not escape Mr. Macaulay. 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 423 
 
 while the Commedia — which has, we think, been erroneously- 
 compared to a vast pile of Gothic architecture, for there is in 
 it nothing merely ornamental, every part, however minute, 
 having its use and application — may best be likened, hav- 
 ing the Inferno chiefly in view, to a maze or labyrinth, in- 
 volved in circles and bewildered with partitions, in which the 
 stranger is almost certain to lose his way till he is furnished 
 with a ground-plan, when, to his surprise, he finds that all is 
 regular and formed on a determined plan. The structure too 
 was designed by its author to answer only a temporary pur- 
 pose j and had the event which it was intended to produce early 
 taken place, it would have been left to sink into oblivion, if 
 not preserved by its poetic merits. 
 
 In the time of Dante, as we learn from his own writings 
 and those of Petrarca and Boccaccio, it was an established 
 dogma, that poetry and other works of imagination had, and 
 should have, beside the literal sense, one or more secret senses. 
 Of these senses Dante enumerates four, — the literal, the al- 
 legoric, the moral, and the anagogic.^ He gives as an ex- 
 ample the psalm. In exitu Israel de Mgypto, etc., where he 
 says the allegoric sense is, our redemption through Christ; 
 the moral, the conversion of the soul from the grief and mi- 
 sery of sin to a state of grace ; the anagogic, the passage of a 
 holy soul from the servitude of this corruption to the liberty 
 of eternal glory. This notion probably had its origin in the 
 Midrashes or allegoric interpretations of the Rabbin, which 
 were adopted and imitated by the Fathers, and hence the ty- 
 pology, etc. of Scripture. Of all the classic poets, Virgil was 
 the one in whom this principle was supposed to prevail most ; 
 every line of the Bucolics and ^neis was regarded as preg- 
 nant with secret meaning. Over and over again Petrarca de- 
 clares such to be his belief. 
 
 Dante in his letter to Can Grande della Scala tells him that 
 
 * lAtera gesta refert, quid credas Allegoria, 
 Moralis quid agas, quid speres Anagogia. 
 We know not who composed these verses. Tlie second and third senses, it 
 shoidd be obsei'ved, are often the same. 
 
X 
 
 424 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 the secret " subject of his poem is man, in as far as, by merit 
 or demerit, after the freedom of his will, he is obnoxious to 
 the rewards or penalties of Justice -y^ on which an old com- 
 mentator observes : " So that from these words you may infer 
 that, according to the allegoric sense, the poet treats of that 
 Hell in which, travelling as wayfarers, we are capable of merit 
 or demerit;" i. e. that the Hell, and consequently the Purga- 
 tory and the Paradise, of the poem, are on this earth and in 
 this life. Dante himself tells us repeatedly that there is a 
 deep and secret sense in his verses. On one occasion he cries 
 out: — 
 
 O voi che avete gl* intelletti sani, 
 Mirate la dottrina, che s' asconde 
 Sotto il velame deUi versi strani. 
 
 Now, as religion is plainly the second or allegoric sense, and 
 the moral sense is too plain and obvious to be the subject of 
 such anxious concealment and mystery, the natural inquiry 
 is, what is the anagogic or most important sense ? This^ we 
 think, is clearly told in the inscription on the poet^s tomb at 
 Ravenna, said to have been composed by himself: — 
 
 Jura Monarchim, Superos, Phlegethonta, Lacusque 
 Lustrando, cecini, voluerunt Fata quousque, etc. 
 
 That is to say, that the object of the poem was political, — 
 namely, the diflPusion of Ghibellinism, the cause of the Em- 
 peror, in opposition to Guelfism, or that of the Papacy. The 
 God of the poem is the Emperor, the vicegerent of the Deity 
 on earth ; his adversary the Pope is therefore Lucifer. Hell 
 is the world, or rather Italy, under the one ; Paradise is the 
 same under its rightful sovereign. The Inferno is, in this 
 view, the most terrific satire ever written, and deeply there- 
 fore did it concern the poet to veil its secret and real sense so 
 closely that it should only be known to the initiated. 
 
 From what precedes, the reader will perceive that we have 
 embraced the theory of Rossetti on this subject. We confess 
 the fact, and are ready to take our share of the scoffs and 
 sneers of ignorance, prejudice, and malevolence ; for in all 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 425 
 
 that has been written against Rossetti, we have discerned no- 
 thing else."^ It is now nearly a quarter of a century since we 
 first became acquainted with his theory, by reading the Spirito 
 Antipapale. Before we had gone through a hundred pages of 
 that work, we saw clearly that that theory was the truth. We 
 have since read this and his other writingsf over and over 
 again ; we have studied and meditated on the works of Dante, 
 Petrarca, and others, and our conviction has become stronger 
 and stronger each day ; and if we possess any character for 
 sense and judgement, we are willing to stake it on the issue 
 of this question. We will at the same time boldly assert that 
 we feel ourselves to be as capable of forming an opinion on it 
 as any of Rossetti's critics. The day, we are confident, will 
 come when the work left incomplete by Rossetti, for want of 
 encouragement, will be taken up and perfected ; not in Eng- 
 land certainly, — for the English mind is most alien from such 
 studies, { — nor do we think in Italy, or even in France, but in 
 Germany, where the theories started elsewhere, as in the case 
 of Beaufort and Astruc, are carried out to their utmost limits. 
 The literature of the Middle Ages, now so enigmatic, will then 
 become clear, and the secret doctrine which pervades it be de- 
 veloped and explained. 
 
 * See two articles in those extinct Reviews, the Foreign and the British and 
 Foreign, evidently by the same hand, and the poor and feeble article by A. W. 
 Schlegel in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The French writers Ozanam and 
 Delecluze have treated Rossetti with respect and courtesy. 
 
 f These are the Comento on the Inferno, the Spirito Antipapale, the Amor 
 Platonico, and the Beatrice, of which only the First Part was published. 
 Rossetti entrusted the MS. for translation to a Frenchman named Aroux, who, 
 instead of translating it, has written a work of his own from Rossetti' s works, 
 hardly noticing his authority. 
 
 X The allegories of the Faery Queen have never been fully explained. It is 
 now a century since Upton's edition was pubUshed, and nothing has been done 
 since ; for Todd's is, like his Milton, mere compilation. Upton's edition is not 
 to be had, and half a century has not exhausted a single impression of Todd's. 
 Much remains to be done by a sagacious editor. We may also notice the slow 
 sale of our own Mythology of Greece and Italy, as a proof of this turn of the 
 English mind. Even the Fairy Mythology is generally regarded as a collection 
 of absurd or amusing stories, rather than as what it is — a part of the philo- 
 sophy of fiction. 
 
426 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 As a test of the correctness of Rossetti's views, we would 
 challenge his opponents to prove that the lion, the wolf, and 
 the panther which the poet sees in the first canto of the In- 
 ferno, do not denote France, Rome, and Florence; that the 
 exclamation of Plutus at the beginning of the seventh canto 
 
 is not 
 
 Pap' e Satan, Pap' e Satan Aleppe ;* 
 
 that the Cittk di Dite and what is related of it do not mean 
 Florence and the approach to it of the Emperor Henry VII.; 
 that it is not the same city and the embassy of the Cardinal 
 di Prato that is the subject of the broad, contemptuous, and 
 biting satire of the twenty-first and following canto; and, 
 finally, that the deep well which occupies the middle of the 
 Inferno, with its floor of ice and Lucifer in the centre of it, 
 do not represent Rome and Guelfic Papacy. We will develope 
 this last a little. 
 
 When Dante and Virgil, his guide, have been carried down 
 by the demon of fraud, the triple Geryon, i. e. the Papacy, 
 into the inclined plain named Malebolge, where in ten con- 
 centric hollow circles the fraudulent are punished, the poet — 
 giving one of his usual hints — compares those whom he sees 
 moving in the first circle to the pilgrims passing the bridge 
 of St. Angelo at Rome, at the time of the Jubilee. He also 
 compares these circles and the bridges that cross them, to the 
 fosses surrounding a fortress : the ninth of them, he says, is 
 twenty-two, and the tenth eleven miles, in circuit ; as they ap- 
 proach the central well he sees towers, as it were, all round it, 
 and he asks what town it is they are approaching. When he 
 comes nearer he finds that these supposed towers are giants, and 
 he compares the head of the first of them that he discerns, to 
 the ball of St. Peter's at Rome. He is let down into the well 
 by one of these giants, and there he beholds in the centre 
 
 * The discovery was made by a young lady with whom Rossetti was reading 
 Dante, and the same thing happened in two instances to ourselves. The ex- 
 planation is : these ladies, being unacquainted with Latin, were not misled by 
 pojpa ! and as they had been told that Dante's Satan was the Pope, they easily ■ 
 discerned the true meaning of the word. 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 427 
 
 Lucifer with three faces, red, black, and yellow, and with a 
 traitor in each mouth. 
 
 Now the circuit of the walls of Rome is about eleven miles, 
 and in the time of Dante there was, or was supposed to be, a 
 fosse twenty-two miles in compass at some distance from the 
 walls. Dante's whole poem is founded on Scripture, especi- 
 ally the writings of St. John, and in the Apocalypse, Satan, 
 the beast, and the false prophet are combined, and unclean 
 spirits come out of their mouths. Moreover the Whore of 
 Babylon — a usual term at the time for the Papacy — is repre- 
 sented as seated upon many waters, represented here as frozen 
 by the chilling blasts from the wings of Lucifer, to denote 
 the evil effects of the influence of Guelfic-Papism. 
 
 The reader who reflects seriously on these coincidences will 
 probably hesitate before he absolutely rejects the new theory. 
 We could multiply proofs, were not this a kind of digression, 
 and our work devoted to another subject. We will only add, 
 that the Purgatory is the opposite of the Hell, and teaches how 
 to escape from its evils ; that the grand scene in the terres- 
 trial Paradise, and the descent of Beatrice, represents the con- 
 dition of the Church down to the fourteenth century; and 
 that — let not the reader start — the Paradise is ^^ the grandiose 
 image of a Masonic Lodge.'' 
 
 The tenable* portions of Rossetti's theory seem to us to 
 be as follows. The Manicheans, who derived their origin from 
 Persia, used a language of double sense, regarding their own 
 system as the religion of the Spirit or of Love. They settled 
 in Italy and the South of France, and, gradually changing 
 many of their tenets, became the sect known under the names 
 of Albigenses, Paterini, etc., sO hostile to the Papacy, and so 
 anxious for a reform in the Church. The Troubadours were 
 mostly of this reformed religion ; and their love-verses, which 
 appear so forced and unnatural to critics, were in general of 
 a mystic nature, the mistress whom they celebrated being 
 
 * We use this term because, in our opinion, many of his positions are ut- 
 terly untenable ; his imagination often led him astray, and thus laid him open 
 to the scoffs and sneers of uncandid critics. 
 
428 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 the Eeformation, or pure religion^ after which they lan- 
 guished.^ 
 
 At the close of the twelfth century, this style of poetry was 
 transferred to Italy, and was adopted by the Ghibellines, who 
 made it political as well as religious, seeking a reform in poli- 
 tics also, and the establishment of the Imperial power in Italy. 
 All the Italian poetry of the thirteenth century is of this 
 kind ; but at the beginning of the next century, as the clergy 
 had discovered the true nature of this pretended love, Dante 
 gave it a new form, and invested his Commedia in the garb of 
 religion. A return to love was however made by Petrarca and 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 These various sects and parties were, in the opinion of Ros- 
 setti, a secret society, with signs, a conventional language, etc. 
 From comparing the ritual books of the Free Masons with 
 Dante's poem and other works, and finding a marvellous simi- 
 larity, he infers that these last are only a continuation of the 
 former, aU descended from the original Manicheism. He also 
 sees in the various works on alchemy and astrology of the 
 Middle Ages, only different forms of the same doctrine.f Our 
 space does not permit us to trace the subject any further ; but 
 we again require the reader to believe that we could not be 
 convinced if there were not some weight in the evidence, and 
 not to reject without careful examination. J 
 
 * It is very remarkable that the Siifees of Persia, the country of Manes, 
 take a similar view of the poetry of Hafeez, and the other Persian poets the 
 contemporaries of the Troubadours. We first discovered and directed Eos- 
 setti's attention to this coincidence. Of the Italian Cantori d' Amore G-inguene 
 says, " lis sont tous occupes du meme sujet, qui est 1' Amour, et Ton pourrait, 
 en quelque sorte, les croire tous amov/reux du mime objetT This is exactly what 
 Rossetti says. 
 
 t Rossetti terms Swedenborg the Dante of the eighteenth century, regarding 
 his works as Masonic ; and certainly, with the key which he gives, the interpre- 
 tation of them is easy. 
 
 X E quel che piii ti graver^ le spalle 
 
 Sar^ la compagnia malvagia e scempia, 
 Colla qual tu cadrai in questa valle, 
 Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia 
 Si far^ contra te. — Par. xvii. v. 61. 
 Rossetti's most inveterate, most envenomed opponent, both in conversation 
 
MILTON AND DANTE. 429 
 
 Rossetti was not merely a most sagacious critic, he was a 
 man of true genius ; in our opinion, tlie greatest lyric poet, 
 perhaps the greatest general poet, that Italy has produced 
 since Torquato Tasso. He was even an Improvisatore, as we 
 can testify of our own knowledge ; and in his Veggente in Soli- 
 tudine will be found one of his improvisations in Malta, taken 
 down in short-hand. He was also a man of the purest virtue, 
 and every region of his mind was pervaded by the spirit of 
 true religion, as appears in all his writings, especially his last 
 work, L^Arpa Evangelica, a collection of sacred poems, the 
 production of his declining years."^ His mind was rather too 
 sensitive, and he let the silly and ignorant or malignant at- 
 tacks made on him give too much disturbance to his equa- 
 nimity : he also suffered from infirmities and a partial loss of 
 sight ; but he attained a good old age, and he enjoyed what 
 rarely falls to the lot of an exile — that greatest of blessings, 
 domestic felicity.t To ourselves it is a matter of grateful re- 
 collection, that we were so happy as to enjoy for many years 
 the friendship and intimacy of a man of such eminent genius, 
 and we feel a melancholy pleasure in thus paying even this 
 slight tribute to his memory ; — 
 
 Purpureos spargam flores, ammamque heati 
 His saltern accumulem donis, et fungar inani 
 Munere amicitice. 
 
 and in writing, was one of his "fellows in exile"! When we call to mind the 
 genius, the virtues, the patriotism of Kossetti, and the imiform courtesy and 
 urbanity of his language, we confess we wonder how his compatriot could, as he 
 did, and in the coarsest terms, charge liim with Ltnposture, with ignorance of the 
 poem he was commenting on and of the history of those times — and all with- 
 out a shadow of proof; mere reckless and confident assertion, which Eossetti 
 amply confuted. But, * Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? ' 
 
 * He also published Versi and II Tempo owero Dio e 1' Uomo, Salterio. 
 
 t Shortly after his arrival in England he married the daughter of his friend 
 PoUdori, a woman possessed of every mental, moral, and personal advantage, 
 the best of wives and best of mothers. With her he passed seven-and-twenty 
 years of uninterrupted harmony ; he lived to see his children attain to matu- 
 rity, all possessed of superior talent, dutiful and aflFectiouate to their parents 
 and attached to each other. 
 
430 
 
 ERRORS IN PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Milton undoubtedly had a strong memory_, like every other 
 man of genius ; but he does not seem to have possessed one 
 of that extreme fidelity which at times is given to inferior 
 men. This^ combined with his loss of sight, caused him oc- 
 casionally to fall into errors ; venial ones no doubt, but still 
 such as should be noted. Such are the following. 
 
 As when to them who sail 
 Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past 
 Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow 
 Sabean odours from the spicy shore 
 Of Araby the Blest.— iv. 159. 
 
 What is here asserted is an impossibility. Any one who 
 will look on a map of the world will see that when a vessel 
 going to India has passed Mozambic, the coast of Arabia is 
 due north to her, and at an immense distance, with a portion 
 of the east coast of Africa interposed. In no case then, and 
 in no part, could those who had sailed by the Cape of Hope 
 and Mozambic meet with Sabean odours wafted by north-east 
 winds. Milton^s blindness amply excuses this mistake ; but 
 surely his commentators who had their sight might have looked 
 at a map and so have discerned the error. 
 
 To the same cause may be assigned the error in the follow- 
 ing passage : — 
 
 Or pilot from amidst the Cyclades, 
 Delos, or Samos, first appearing, kens 
 A cloudy spot. — v. 264. 
 
 Samos is not one of the Cyclades. 
 
ERRORS IN PARADISE LOST. 431 
 
 We cannot offer the same excuse for the following error, 
 which we can only ascribe to the incuria which comes at times 
 on even the most vigilant. 
 
 Meanwhile, in utmost longitude where heaven 
 With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun 
 Slowly descended, and with right aspect 
 Against the eastern gate of Paradise 
 Leveled his evening rays. — iv. 539. 
 
 Here no critic seems ever to have asked himself the ques- 
 tion, how the sun who was sinking in the west could level his 
 rays directly against the eastern gate of Paradise ? It might 
 be said, that it was against the inner side of the gate, and that 
 the rays came over Paradise ; but this is contrary to all ana- 
 logy ; for no one but Satan entered the garden except at the 
 gate, and Uriel came on one of these beams. Besides, it is 
 refuted by the following passage : — 
 
 And Uriel to his charge 
 Eetumed on that bright beam, \^'hose point now raised, 
 Bore him slope downwards, to tlie sun now fallen 
 Beneath the Azores. — iv. 589. 
 
 ^Tien describing the Serpent, Milton says, — 
 
 Never since of serpent-kind 
 Loveher, not those that in Illyria changed 
 Sermione and Cadmus. — ix. 504. 
 
 No ancient writer whatever names the wife of Cadmus Her- 
 mione, always Harmonia. The two names were evidently con- 
 founded in Milton's mind ; and as Ovid does not mention the 
 name, and he was perhaps no great reader of ApoUodorus, and 
 did not recollect the passage in the Rhodian poet in which 
 the true name occurs, he fell into this error. It did not of 
 course escape Bentley, but not one of the subsequent critics 
 notices it. 
 
 The following are mere slips of memory : — 
 
 Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned 
 
 Charybdis, and by the other wJiirlpool steered. — ii. 1019. 
 
 Scylla is nowhere called a whirlpool. But perhaps what 
 
432 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Ovid tells of her being changed by Circe when bathing, was 
 running in his mind ; see ii. 660. 
 
 Nor that Niseian isle 
 Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, 
 Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove, 
 Hid Amalthea and her florid son, 
 Young Bacchus, from his step-dame Ehea's eyes. — iv. 275. 
 
 In the narrative of Diodorus Siculus, whom Milton here fol- 
 lows, they are not hidden. 
 
 When Charlemain with all his peerage /eZZ 
 By Fontarabbia. — i. 586. 
 
 Charlemain was not among the fallen on that fatal day ; but 
 it had probably been many years since Milton had read the 
 
 Morgante Maggiore. 
 
 As when the potent rod 
 Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day. 
 Waved round the coast, called up a pitchy cloud 
 Of locusts warping on the eastern wind. — i. 338. 
 
 Warping is a technical term, and Milton appears to have 
 misunderstood it. A ship is warped to get her out of port, 
 when there is no wind, or it is contrary. It is performed thus : 
 — an anchor, with a cable attached, is carried out ahead in a 
 boat to some distance from the ship and there cast ; the ship 
 then, by means of the capstan, is brought up to that place ; 
 the anchor is then raised and carried out as before, and so on, 
 till the vessel is got out sufficiently. Now this will not apply 
 by any means to the progress of the swarm of locusts, whose 
 motion seems rather to answer to what he afterwards (xi. 840) 
 calls hulling, undulating with the wind. 
 In the first edition, the text stood thus : — 
 
 In Gibeah, when the hospitable doors 
 
 Exposed their matrons, to prevent worse rape. — i. 504. 
 
 And though this might pass as a poetic license, yet in the se- 
 cond he gave it as it stands in the text at present. 
 
 Milton's errors are sometimes only apparently so. For in- 
 stance : — 
 
ERRORS IN PARADISE LOST. 433 
 
 So rose the Danite strong, 
 Herculean Samson, from the harlot lap 
 Of Philistean Dalila. 
 
 And in Samson Agonistes he terms her unchaste, without the 
 warrant of Scripture. But when we recollect the sense which 
 Milton puts on the Hebrew verb, play the whore^ we shall see 
 that he terms her a harlot and unchaste on account of her 
 treacherous violation of her marriage vow. 
 
 We long thought there might be an error in — 
 
 As in an organ from one blast of wind 
 
 To many a row of pipes the sound-hoard breathes. — i. 708 ; 
 
 but on applying to an eminent and scientific musician,! we got 
 the following explanation : — 
 
 '^ The wind produced by the bellows is driven into a reser- 
 voir called the wind-chest, above which is placed the sound- 
 board, and thence by intricate contrivance conveyed to each 
 ' row of pipes.^ \\lien a stop is drawn, the supply of wind is 
 prepared for every pipe in it, and it is admitted when the 
 organist presses the key he wishes to speak. Therefore the 
 ' sound-board breathes,^ or sends the breath into ' many a row 
 of pipes,^ and Milton's description is correct ; as, when speak- 
 ing of music, it always is. There is a passage about fugue- 
 playing (xi. 561), every word of which is pregnant with mean- 
 ing to a musician, but to him only in its full extent. All 
 other poets, except Milton and Shakespeare, constantly blun- 
 der when they use musical terms ; they never do." 
 
 The following lines contain an apparent error, which has 
 perplexed the critics : — 
 
 Their sumptuous gluttonies and gorgeous feasts 
 
 On citron tables or Atlantic stone. — Par. Reg. iv. 114 ; 
 
 for the Romans did not use marble dining-tables. But it is 
 probably the floor of the triclinium, which was often formed of 
 Numidian marble [giallo antico), that the poet had in view; 
 
 * See above, page 185. 
 
 t Professor Taylor. See above, page 313. 
 
 2 F 
 
434 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 and it is not at all unlikely that or may be a misprint for 
 and, a very common printer's error, as we know by experi- 
 ence."^ 
 
 We may not regard it as an error, but notice it as a pecu- 
 liarity in Milton, that when a theory or an interpretation was 
 not, as appeared to him, certain, he would give the different 
 views at different times. Thus, though he generally follows 
 the Ptolemaic astronomy, as most accordant with the literal 
 sense of Scripture, he yet occasionally hints that the Coper- 
 nican might be the truth. Of this we have an instance in the 
 angcFs discourse with Adam, in the beginning of the eighth 
 book j and when describing the return of Uriel to the sun, 
 " now fallen beneath the Azores," he adds — 
 
 Whether the prime orb, 
 Incredible how swift, had thither rolled 
 Diurnal, or this less voluble earth 
 By shorter flight to the east had left him there, 
 Arraying with reflected purple and gold 
 The clouds that on his western throne attend. — iv. 592. 
 
 Of the passage in Genesis, ^' the sons of God saw the daugh- 
 ters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all 
 that they chose," there were three interpretations, and Milton 
 gives the three in different parts of his poems. 
 
 To the opinion of the Fathers, that the sons of God were 
 the good angels, he alludes in this place : — 
 
 If ever, then. 
 Then had the sons of God excuse to have been 
 Enamoured at that sight. — v. 446, 
 
 The second, 'that they were the descendants of Seth, he gives 
 thus : — 
 
 To these, that sober race of men, whose lives 
 Eeligious titled them the sons of God, 
 Shall yield up all their virtue. — xi. 621. 
 
 * Or make the peaceable or quiet Nile 
 
 Doubted of Csesar.— ^eawre. and FletcTi. : The False One, i. 2. 
 Here the note of Mr. Dyce, the most cautious of critics, is " Query and /" 
 No doubt it is the right word. In Samson Agonistes, v. 1692, Milton probably 
 dictated »or, not and^ as there is an opposition intended. 
 
ERRORS IN PARADISE LOST. 435 
 
 and he notices the third, that they were evil angels, in this 
 place of Paradise Regained : — 
 
 Before the Flood, thou, with thy lusty crew. 
 False titled sons of God, roamiag the earth. 
 Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men, 
 And coupled with them.— ii. 178. 
 
 2 F 2 
 
430 
 
 THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 When we pass from Conrns and the earlier productions of 
 Milton^s muse to Paradise Lost^ we become aware of a consi- 
 derable change : while the rules of grammar and logic seem 
 to be better observed,"^ there is less simplicity and less genuine 
 Anglicism. The cause was probably his addiction in the in- 
 terval to controversial prose-writing, in which, while he found 
 it necessary to attend more closely to his reasoning, he may 
 have deemed it of importance to seek to give dignity and force 
 to his writings by the employment of Latinisms and involu- 
 tion ; his experience in teaching also may not have been with- 
 out influence. In Paradise Regained he seems to have made 
 a return toward his earlier and simpler style. 
 
 Of his Latinisms we may note the following. 
 
 Words of Latin origin, which in English are used in their 
 tralatitious or moral sense, will frequently be found employed 
 in Paradise Lost in their original physical sense; adjectives 
 also are used as substantives. 
 
 * See above, p. 285. 
 
 But let my due feet never fail 
 
 To walk the studious cloisters pale, 
 
 And love the high embowed roof, 
 
 With antic pillars massy-proof, 
 
 And storied windows richly dight. — II Pens. 155. 
 Here, in strict grammar, feet is the noun to love, and the roof is di(/ht with 
 piUars and windows ; while he means let me love, '-nd it is the cloister that is 
 dight. It may no doubt be said that dight belongs to windows, but in that case 
 with should be and. 
 
 Ay me! while thee the shores and sounding seas 
 
 Wash far away. — Lycidas, 154 : 
 here the shores wash. Such slips do not occur in his later poetry. 
 
THE LANGUAGE. 437 
 
 It was a practice of the Latin poets to use the simple for 
 the compound verb, and in this Milton has often followed them. 
 There are however instances, but much more rare, of the same 
 practice in Shakespeare, Spenser, Fairfax, and other poets."^ 
 
 No wonder, fallen {from) such a pernicious higlith. — i. 282. 
 For who can think {of) submission? — ih. x. 661. 
 
 Expatiate {on) and confer {about) 
 Their state-affairs. — ih. 774. 
 Thus trampled {on), thus expelled. — ii. 195. 
 
 Ere he arrive {at) 
 The happy isle. — ib. 409. 
 
 From them I go {on) 
 This imcouth errand. — ih. 826. 
 The rest shall hear me caU and oft be warned {of) 
 Their sinful state. — iii. 185. 
 The trepidation talked {of). — ih. 483. 
 To wait {for) them with his keys. — ih. 485. 
 Vernal dehght and joy, able to drive {away) 
 AU sadness but despair. — iv. 155. 
 These others wheel {to) the north. — ih. 783. 
 
 And rising on stiff pennons tower {to) 
 The mid aerial sky. — vii. 441. 
 
 Not as man 
 Whom they triumphed {over) once lapsed. — x. 571. 
 Ejected, emptied, gazed {at), unpitied, shunned. — P. E.. i. 414. 
 
 There is a figure of rhetoric much used by the Latin poets, 
 named zeugma, by which a verb is omitted, as being as it were 
 included in another verb. Of this perhaps there are some ex- 
 amples in Paradise Lost, as : — 
 
 She to him as oft engaged 
 To he returned by noon amid the bower. 
 And {to have) all things in best order. — ix. 400. 
 
 By his side, 
 As in a glistening zodiac, 7mng the sword, 
 Satan's dire dread, and in his hand {wa^, or he held) the spear. — xi. 247» 
 
 * We have observed ten instances in Shakespeare ; six in Spenser ; five in 
 Fail-fax ; four in Drayton ; nearly fifty in Paradise Lost and Regained. 
 
438 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Milton at times preferred the authority of the Scriptures 
 and Homer to that of Virgil and his more arti^cial school,, and 
 had no hesitation to repeat the same word in the same line or 
 same sentence. A very remarkable instance is vii. 359-365, 
 where, in the space of seven lines, the word light occurs not 
 less than four times. 
 
 But the most remarkable peculiarity of Paradise Lost, from 
 which his preceding poetry is perfectly free, and one to which 
 the critics have agreed to show no mercy, is the frequent plays 
 upon words, which are held to disfigure it. We will not attempt 
 to excuse or defend them, for they are not by any means objects 
 of our admiration ; but we will endeavour to account for them. 
 They are then no proof of Milton's bad taste, but spring from 
 the same source as so many of his other errors — his thraldom 
 to the letter of Scripture, and his consequent persuasion that 
 anything found there was, as being the dictation of the Spirit, 
 right, and deserving of imitation. As examples, we need only 
 to remind the reader of the well-known " beseeching or be- 
 sieging,'' " brought into the world a world of woe," etc. 
 
 In that very part of Scripture on which Milton founded his 
 poem, we meet with the following instance of the Paronomasia, 
 as writers on rhetoric designate this mode of playing upon 
 words. " And they were both naked i^ariimmimj D^r^njJ ) . . . 
 and the serpent was subtle {^arum, Dliy)." Again, in the 
 same book (xxix. 10), " And he watered {yasheq, \>}^\) the 
 flock .... and kissed {yishaq, p^)) Rachel." So also (Judges 
 XV. 16), " And Samson said. With the jawbone of an ass [ha- 
 khamor, "li'^nL'), heaps upon heaps [khamor khamorathayim, 
 D^nnbq liDq)." Many other instances will be found in other 
 parts of Scripture, especially in the Prophets, more particu- 
 larly in Isaiah, for whom Milton's admiration was most pro- 
 found ; something of the same kind may also be discerned in 
 the Epistles of St. Paul. 
 
 Another practice of Milton's may have had its origin also 
 in his veneration for the language of Scripture. It is well 
 known that the genitive its was not used in poetry or the 
 higher prose till after the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
 
THE LANGUAGE. 439 
 
 tury;^ his being the genitive of both he and it, as may be seen 
 in the Bible and Milton. Now in upwards of thirty places of 
 his poems Milton has her.-\ The far greater part of these, no 
 doubt, such as earth, region, valley, Paradise, are feminine in 
 Latin ; but there are others, such as heaven, hell, deep, firma- 
 ment, which are neuter. As then some words, such as animal, 
 which are neuter in Latin, are feminine in Hebrew, in which 
 language also the adjectival form, which is neuter in Latin, is 
 feminine, this circumstance may — for we would not assert it — 
 have operated on the mind of the poet. 
 
 A peculiarity of Milton^s poetic language, arising evidently 
 from the fineness and delicacy of his musical ear, was his 
 avoidance of the unpleasant sound of sh in the Hebrew pro- 
 per names. With all his veneration for the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 he, on this point, preferred to follow the LXX and the Vul- 
 gate. Thus, instead of Beersheba, we have Beersaba; for Hesh- 
 bon, Hesebon ; for Bashan, Basan ; and so forth. He also has 
 Sirocco for the Italian Scirocco. In fact, the only names in 
 which he has retained the sh sound are Joshua, Goshen, and 
 Ashtaroth. He seems to have adopted this principle long be- 
 fore the era of Paradise Lost, for in one of his early prose 
 works we meet with " Abimelech and the SechemitesJ'X 
 
 Milton, it is evident, had no dislike to the aspirate ; yet for 
 some reason unknown to us, he has given Oreb, Auran, and 
 Ades, instead of Horeb, Hauran, and Hades. 
 
 * Shakespeare uses its. — Winter Tale, i. 2 ; Henry VIII. i. 1. Milton has it 
 once, Hymn on Nat. st. x. 
 
 t Both Spenser and Fairfax use her occasionally, mostly with Latin feminines ; 
 at times with neuters, as heart. 
 
 J "We need hardly observe that the sh sound is frequently avoided in the dra- 
 matists by adding a syllable, as it were, as ' condition.' But this was the 
 original mode of pronouncing ci and ti in all words of this form derived from 
 the Latin and French, as we may see in Chaucer. 
 
440 
 
 THE VERSE. 
 
 The verse of Paradise Lost — we might indeed say^ our blank 
 verse in general — does not seem to be as yet generally under- 
 stood. It is really painful to read Johnson's essay on the sub- 
 ject, and to see him signalizing some of the most melodious 
 lines of the poem as wanting in the very quality which most 
 distinguishes them. But Johnson had no ear whatever for the 
 variety of poetic melody, he could only discern and enjoy me- 
 chanic forms; the heroic verse, in which the accent falls regu- 
 larly on every alternate syllable, he regarded as perfect, what 
 varied from that standard as faulty, imperfect, and inharmo- 
 nious. In fact, he reminds one of the decision of the ass, in 
 the Italian poet's ingenious apologue, when chosen to decide 
 whether the palm for musical skill should be given to the 
 nightingale or the cuckoo. "It may be, Madam Nightingale,'' 
 said the donkey to the former, "that your song has more trills 
 and turns in it than that of the cuckoo, but the cuckoo's has 
 more method." 
 
 Modern blank verse seems to be indebted for its origin to 
 the Italians. The Provencal poets made frequent use of a line 
 of five feet, sometimes with, but more usually without, a hy- 
 permetric syllable, but always riming, and always, like the 
 French measure derived from it, with the caesura at the end 
 of the second foot. They had probably derived it from the 
 Latin hendecasyllables, with which, when not read metrically, 
 it pretty accurately corresponds : ex. gr. — 
 
 Liigete Veneres Cupidinesque. 
 
 The Italians, as is well known, derived their poetic forms in 
 
THE VERSE. 441 
 
 general from the Troubadours, and the hendecasyilabic, or five- 
 foot line, became the sole measure of their sonnets and the 
 staple of their Canzoni, and also their heroic measure in the 
 Terza Rima of Dante and the Ottava Rima of Boccaccio. 
 But it is a fact not generally observed, that Dante's contem- 
 porary, Barberini, employed the five-foot line, both rimed and 
 unrimed, in his poems named Documenti d' Am ore and Reg- 
 gimento delle Donne -."^ ex. gr. — 
 
 Questa Giustizia, da tal Sir mandata, 
 
 E senza prova di falh insegnata. 
 
 Ne vien misericordia con lei 
 
 S' el con rigor va giudicando i rei. 
 
 Or incomincia dir cio ch' elk face ; 
 
 Fa — ^poi non giova — ben ciascun che tace, etc. 
 
 Da sicurta a tutta gente Amore, 
 E fa portar li feriti e li morti 
 Davanti a lui, e dice sovra loro 
 Queste parole che qui sono scritte, etc. 
 
 In these poems of Barberini, the caesura almost always oc- 
 curs at the end of the second foot, though not with the strict 
 regularity of the Proven9al and French measures, while in the 
 sonnets and other forms this is not the case. 
 
 The riming couplet never found favour in the eyes of the 
 Italian poets ; but early in the sixteenth century the blank 
 verse, under the name of Versi Sciolti, was adopted for the 
 nascent tragic drama, and was used by Bucellai in his didac- 
 tic poem L'Api, and by Trissino in his epic L' Italia liberata 
 da' Goti, but with the varied caesura then general in Italian 
 poetry. At the same time, in Spain, Boscan, in imitation of 
 the Italian poets, translated Hero and Leander from the 
 Greek in this measure. t With the exception of the drama, 
 
 * See the passages quoted by Eossetti in his Spirito Antipapale, p. 289. 
 
 t Milton, in his notice of The Verse prefixed to his Paradise Lost, says, " Not 
 without cause, therefore, some hoth Italian and Spanish poets of prime note 
 have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works ; as have also long since 
 our best English tragedies." Ho of course alludes to (beside those mentioned 
 in the text) La Coltivazione of Alamanni, Le Sette Giornate of T. Ta^so, and 
 the Aminta, Pastor Fido, etc. As we know not what Ms Spanish reading was. 
 
 v. 
 
442 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 and of some pieces by Chiabrera^ the Versi Sciolti ceased, we 
 believe, to form a part of Italian poetry till the end of the 
 last century, when they were employed by Parini and others. 
 About the same time they were adopted and became a fa- 
 vourite form in the revived poetry of Portugal and Brazil. 
 Perhaps in both cases it arose from the admiration of the 
 poetry of Milton, Young, and Thomson. 
 
 The English language borrowed its poetic measures from 
 the French and Proven9al. It first adopted the four-foot and 
 six-foot measures ; but as the Anglo-Saxon verse, like that of 
 the whole Teutonic family, had been regulated by alliteration 
 and accent, not by quantity or number of syllables, the Eng- 
 lish poets would not submit to the restraint of having the 
 same exact number of syllables in a line, but regulating their 
 verse by accent alone, admitted feet of one or of three sylla- 
 bles into their lines."^ The five-foot measure was introduced 
 by Chaucer ; and as he used the same freedom of caesura as 
 the Italian poets, we think it more likely that he adopted it 
 from them, with whose poetry he was so familiar, than from the 
 poets of France or of Provence. 
 
 The earliest specimen of blank verse in English is the trans- 
 lation of the second and fourth books of the ^neis by the 
 accomplished Earl of Surrey, who fell a victim to the ruth- 
 less tyranny of Henry VIII. in 1547. As he was so well 
 versed in Italian literature, it seems more probable that he 
 adopted it from Rucellai and others, than that he formed it 
 from the five-foot riming measures of his own language. As 
 
 we cannot be certain whether he was acquainted with Bos can's poem or not, or 
 with the short pieces of Grarcilaso de la Vega, Figueroa, and others ; but it ia 
 highly probable that he may liave read Jauregui's beautiful translation of the 
 Aminta, which was printed at Rome in 1607, and which he may have piu-chased 
 when he was in Italy. He would seem not to have known, or rather not to 
 have recollected. Lord Surrey's verses, of which we are about to speak. 
 
 * It was the same with the old poetry of Grermany. In the Nibelungen 
 Lied, feet of one and of three syllables are of frequent occurrence. It may be 
 here observed, that the measure of this poem occm-s in English in the Coke's 
 Tale of Gamely n, and other poems of tlic same kind, and in Spanish in the 
 old poem of the Gid. 
 
THE VERSE. 443 
 
 a first attempt it naturally has defects, yet in many places it 
 exhibits the true form of blank verse. We take the following 
 examples at random : — 
 
 I waked. Therewith to the house-top I clamb, 
 And hearkening stood I. Like as when the flame 
 Lights in the com, by drift of boisterous wind, 
 Or the swift stream, that driveth from the hill, 
 Roots up the fields, and presseth the ripe corn 
 And ploughed land, and overwhelms the groves : 
 The silly herdman all astonnied stands. 
 From the high rock while he doth hear the sound. 
 
 As wrestling winds out of dispersed whirl 
 Befight themselves, the west with southern blast 
 And gladsome east, proud of Aurora's horse ; 
 The woods do whiz, and foamy Nereiis, 
 Raging in fury, with three-forked mace 
 From bottom's depth doth welter up the seas. 
 
 Surrey^s verse is in general decasyllabic ; he does not often 
 admit an anapaest or employ a hypermetric line ; and he very 
 rarely has a hypermetric syllable after the csesura. 
 
 Some short pieces by Grimoald, Gascoigne, and Vallens 
 were written in blank verse in the sixteenth century ; but this 
 measure found no favour, as the vehicle of narrative, till it 
 was employed by Milton. On the other hand, its ease and 
 freedom recommended it to the drama, and so early as the 
 first years of Elizabeth it appeared in the Gordebuc of Nor- 
 ton and Sackville.^ It was not however till the later years of 
 her reign that it was brought into general use by Marlow, 
 Green, Peele, and others. But it had not yet been able to 
 emancipate itself completely from the couplet-form, and hence 
 we constantly find rimes intermingled wdth it. We give the 
 following lines from Peele's David and Bethsabe as an ex- 
 ample of the dramatic verse of that period : — 
 
 See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel, 
 The fairest daughter that obeys the king, 
 In all the land the Lord subdued to me ; 
 Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well, 
 
 * The lilies iii this play ai*e strictly decasyllabic. 
 
444 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar. 
 Sweeter than flames of fine perfumed myrrh. 
 And comelier than the silver clouds that dance 
 On Zephyr's wings before the king of heaven. 
 
 Here the lines, taken separately, are beautiful, but they do 
 not run into each other and form a system ; there is a stop at 
 the end of each, and they resemble couplets deprived of their 
 rimes. This kind of blank verse may also be seen in the 
 earlier plays of Shakespeare himself; but he and his fellow- 
 dramatists gradually arrived at the sweep of blank verse, — 
 which however is to be found in Marlow, — and in the begin- 
 ning of the seventeenth century, dramatic verse had attained 
 to perfection. In this state we may see it employed by Mil- 
 ton in his Comus, and even in his Samson Agonistes, and, 
 with such modifications as we shall notice, in his epic poems. 
 
 This dramatic verse is five-footed, not decasyllabic, for it 
 admits anapaests, and also hypermetric syllables, both after 
 the csesura and at the end of the line."^ The first foot of the 
 line, and also the first of its second part, may be a trochee. 
 All these characteristics may be discerned in Milton^s Comus, 
 as well as in Shakespeare and the other dramatists. 
 
 The varieties which Milton introduced into the structure 
 
 * The anapaest occurs so frequently in our old poets, that editors might give 
 up using the unsightly syncopes and eUsions of the old printers. The Grreek 
 iambic verse also admitted this foot and the tribrach, and, like our own drama, 
 more frequently in comedy than in tragedy ; it occurs ten times in Aristophanes 
 for one in the tragedians. So it abounds in our Beaumont and Fletcher, in 
 whom there are hues that contain but one iamb. With the aid of it, aU the 
 verse in these poets that is printed as prose, might easily be brought back to 
 its true form. 
 
 Perhaps it would be better, instead of using the term ' hypermetric syllable,' to 
 regard it and the preceding iamb as forming the foot named Bacchius (-' — ' — ), 
 used so often by Plautus, though hardly ever by the Greeks. We will here 
 note some curious coincidences. 
 
 Plautus has tetrameter Bacchiacs, as — 
 
 Tergeri, aut | omari, | poliri, ex | poliri. 
 
 Now this is the very measiu*e of the Spanish Versos de Arte Mayor : — 
 
 Jamas la j tu fama, | jamas la | tu gloria 
 
 Daran en | los siglos | eterna | memdria. — Juan de Mena ; 
 
THE VERSE. 445 
 
 of his epic verse are, 1. A peculiar kind of anapaest ; 2. The 
 making the two first feet of the line trochees, and in one case 
 even anapaests ; 3. Doing the same after the caesura. To 
 these we may add that, 4, he retained the use of the hyper- 
 metric syllable after the caesura. Of all these varieties we 
 will now give examples. 
 
 If it be asked, where did Milton find these peculiarities, or 
 were they devices of his own ? we reply, that he derived them 
 from the poets of modern Italy. Thus, as to the anapaests, no- 
 thing is more erroneous than to term the Italian heroic verse 
 hendecasyllabic;"^ for it frequently is in reality of fourteen or 
 more syllables. Italian diphthongs are such only nominally ; for 
 each vowel is pronounced distinctly, and the two do not form 
 one sound, as in Greek and some other languages.f In like 
 manner, when two vowels meet, it is only in some cases that 
 there is an elision. Thus, in the following verse of Petrarca — 
 
 L' 6ro, e le perle, e i fior vermigli, e i bianchi. — Rime i. son. 31 ; 
 
 there are — as even the punctuation shows — actually eighteen 
 syllables ; for the vowels in fior and in bianchi are pronounced 
 distinctly. But the verse is of five feet, as we may observe 
 
 and we might say that this was adopted from Plautus. But the measure of the 
 Shah-nameh and the narrative poetry of Persia is : — 
 
 which is the Arabic measure Mutakarib, to be found in the Koran, so that pro- 
 bably both Persians and Spaniards got it from the Arabs. 
 
 But this is also one of the measures of tlie modem "Welsh poetry : — 
 lach barthau | dwyreinfyd ! | cartrefla | henafiaeth, 
 
 Y tiroedd | ardderchog | fu 'n rhdddi | magVraeth. — Blodau Olyn Ihfji. 
 Our theory is that the Welsh poets thought to imitate the EngUsh anapaests ; 
 but the genius of their language, which places the accent on the penult., forced 
 the Bacchius on them. 
 
 * If any one doubts the existence of anapaests in ItaUan heroic verse, let 
 him read the following lines of Ariosto : — 
 
 Pedoni e cavaheri, e venia in campo 
 La ddve Carlo Marsflio attendea. — Orl. Fur. ii. 37 ; 
 for the accents cannot be altered in venia and Ma/rsilio. 
 
 t In Latin regione is counted as of four, in Italian as of three, syllables ; yet 
 an Italian will pronounce thom exactly alike. In their poetry however, diph- 
 thongs, as io in regione^ glorioso^ etc., frequently count as two syllables. 
 
446 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 just that number of ictus, or strong accents, in it. In another 
 verse of the same poet : — 
 Lassando ogni sua impresa; e piagne, e trema. — Hime i. son. 90, 10, 
 
 we may observe that there are seventeen syllables, and besides 
 a peculiarity of Italian verse, which Milton did not venture to 
 imitate, namely, that the first foot is an iamb, and the second 
 a trochee. As almost every line of the five-foot poetry of 
 Italy thus contains more than eleven syllables, it is needless 
 for us to give any further examples. The following will serve 
 to show how Milton followed the Italian poets : — 
 
 That were an ignominy and shame beneath. — i. 115. 
 Though all our glory extinct and happy state. — ib. 141. 
 Of glory obscured. As when the sun new-risen. — ih. 594. 
 Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain. — ii. 207. 
 Inclines here to continue, and build up here. — ih. 313. 
 So he with difficulty and labour hard. — ih. 1021. 
 Two only, who yet by sovran gift possess. — ih. 366. 
 High matter thou enjoinest me, O prime of men. — v. 563. 
 For we have also our evening and our mom. — ib. 628. 
 Us happy, and without love no happiness. — viii. 621. 
 Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound. — ix. 451. 
 Before thee ; and not repenting this obtain. — x. 75. 
 Justice with mercy, as may illustrate most. — ib. 78. 
 Of high collateral glory ; him Thrones and Powers. — ih. 86. 
 Wherefore didst thou beget me ? I sought it not. — ih. 762. 
 Not this rock only. His omnipresence fills. — xi. 336. 
 
 Many of these, no doubt, can come under the head of the 
 hypermetric syllable after the caesura; but we may observe 
 that they are all followed by vowels. 
 
 2. Commencing the line, after the manner of the Proven9al 
 poets, with two trochees, has been a favourite practice of the Ita- 
 lian poets from the earliest times to the present day. We may 
 see it in the very first lines of the Gerusalemme Liberata :^ — 
 
 Canto r armi pietose, e '1 capitano. 
 
 S' armo d'A'sia e di Libia il popol misto. 
 
 Non circondi la fronte in Elicona. 
 
 * The first three feet of these hnes, it will be seen, correspond with the two 
 first feet of the classic choriambic. See above, page 317, note. 
 
THE VERSE. 447 
 
 Hai di stelle immortali aurea corona. 
 E' che '1 vero condito in molli versi 
 r piu schivi allettando ha persuaso. 
 Cosi air egro fanciiil porgiamo aspersi 
 Di soave licor gl' orli del vaso 
 Succlii amari ingannato intanto ei beve, 
 E dair inganno sue vita riceve. 
 
 In this last passage, every line but the last we may see com- 
 mences with two trochees, and the fourth of them contains 
 only two iambs, in which last practice Milton also imitates his 
 Italian prototypes."^ 
 
 Hell born not to contend with spirits of heaven. — ^ii. 687. 
 
 A'nd corporeal to incorporeal turn. — v. 413. 
 
 Spirits odorous breathes, flowers and their fruits. — ib. 482. 
 
 I'n their triple degrees, regions to which. — ib. 750. 
 
 Through the infinite host, nor less for that — .ib. 874. 
 
 U'niversal reproach, far worse to bear. — ^vi. 34. 
 
 O'ver fi.'sh of the sea, and fowl of the air. — vii. 533. 
 
 To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared. — viii. 299. 
 
 Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before. — ib. 475. 
 
 I'n the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. — x. 205. 
 
 Me, me only, just object of his ire. — ib. 936. 
 
 B'y the waters of Kfe, where'er they sat. — xi. 79. 
 
 I'n the visions of God. It was a hill. — ib. 377. 
 
 A'mong daughters of men the fairest found. — Par. Reg. ii. 154. 
 
 A'fter forty days' fasting had remained. — ib. 243. 
 
 From that placid aspect and meek regard. — iii. 217. 
 
 I'n the bosom of bliss and hght of Ught. — iv. 597. 
 
 That invincible Samson, far renowned. — Sam. Agon. 341. 
 
 For his people of old ; what hinders now P — ib. 1533. 
 
 O' Jehovah our Lord, how wondrous great. — Ps. viii. 1. 
 
 It will be observed that here, as in the Italian poetry, the 
 caesura falls at the end of the third foot, and that four of these 
 verses (v. 482, 750; x. 205 ; xi. 377) contain only two iambic 
 feet. 
 
 * The only instances we have met with out of Milton, are — 
 
 Nimph^s, Faiinfes and A'madriades. — Chauc. C. T. 2930. 
 I'n these flattering streams, and makes our faces. — Macbeth, ui. 2. 
 The foUowing line in Comus {v. 336) must, we think, be read in this manner, — 
 
 O'r, if your influence be quite dammed up ; 
 for the context shows that the emphasis must be laid on your. 
 
448 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 As an example of au Italian verse commencing with an 
 anapaest, we may give the following from Tasso, in which 
 however the foot is rather a choriamb : — 
 
 Tea i muti campi e quel sHenzio amico. — Ger. Lib. vi. 103. 
 
 Milton has the following : — 
 
 With impetuous recoil and jarring sound. — ii. 880. 
 And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old. — iii. 36.* 
 Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep. — ih. 586. 
 No ingrateful food. And food alike those pure. — v. 407. 
 And the habitations of the just ; to him. — vii. 186. 
 Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap. — ix. 1060. 
 Whom thus answered the arch-fi'end now undisguised. 
 
 Par. Beg. i. 357. 
 
 3. In Dante and Petrarca, but very rarely in the later poets, 
 we meet with two trochees after the caesura. f Such however 
 was Milton^ s esteem for those poets, that even in this he fol- 
 lows them. 
 
 Per me si va nell' et^mo dol6re. — Inf. iii. 2. 
 
 A'nche di qua nu6va schiera s' adiina. — ih. 120. 
 
 E piu non disse, e rimase turbato. — Purg. iii. 45. 
 
 E poi al partir son piu levi che tigre. 
 
 E '1 mar senz' onda, e per TA'lpe ogni pesce. 
 
 Prima ch' io trovi in cio pace ne tr^gua. 
 
 Petr. parte i. son. 37. 
 
 Milton offers the following examples of this structure % : — 
 
 When wiU and reason — reason also is choice. — iii. 108. 
 Burned after them t6 the bottomless pit. — vi. 866. 
 
 * " He [Wordsworth] talked of Milton, and observed, how he sometimes in- 
 dulged himself, in the Paradise Lost, in hnes which, if not in time, you could 
 hardly caU verse, instancing ' And Tiresias,' etc. ; and then noticed the sweet 
 flowing hnes which followed, and with regard to which he had no doubt the 
 unmusical line before had been inserted." — Life of Wordsworth, ii. 311. Now 
 that line ends a sentence, and Wordsworth's error arose from his ignorance of 
 the poet's pronunciation. Se sounded Tiresias in the ordinary English way, 
 TiresTias; Milton, who abhorred s\ in the classic manner, Tiresias, in four syl- 
 lables, and so the line is perfectly harmonious. 
 
 t They are frequent however in the comic blank verse : see the comedies of 
 Ariosto and Maffei's Le Ceremonie. 
 
 X The same occurs in Chaucer, if we may trust the printed text. 
 
THE VERSE. 449 
 
 Created tliee, in the image of God. — vii. 427. 
 
 And dust shalt eat all the days of thy life. — x. 178. 
 
 With them from bliss to the bottomless pit. — Par. Reg. i. 361. 
 
 And made him bow to the gods of his wives. — ii. 171. 
 
 Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men. — ih. 180. 
 
 Not difficult if thou hearken to m^. — ih. 428. 
 
 The Pontic king, and in triumph had rode. — iii. 36. 
 
 Light from above, from the fountain of light. — ^iv. 289. 
 
 4. Like the dramatists^ Milton frequently has a hyperme- 
 tric syllable at the csesnra, or even at the semicsesura. 
 
 On L^mnos, the ^gae'an* isle. Thus they relate. — ^i. 746.t 
 Before thy fellows, ambitious to win. — vi. 160. 
 With their bright luminaries, that set and rose. — vii. 385. 
 Thy condescension, and shall be honoured ever. — ^viii. 649. 
 Who sees thee ? and what is one ? who should be seen. — ix. 546. 
 That cniel serpent. On me exercise not. — x. 927. 
 Seemed their petition, than when that ancient pair. — xi. 10. 
 For in those days might only shall be admired, — ih. 689. 
 
 We have observed above, that the heroic measure does not 
 admit monosyllabic feet. A good reader will however in such 
 instances as the following — where there is a stop after the first 
 monosyllable of the Une — give that word the time of a foot, 
 and read the next foot as an anapaest. 
 
 Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth ; at last. — ^i. 620. 
 Rose, like an exhalation, with the sound. — ih. 711. 
 What ! when we fled amain, pursued and struck. — ^ii. 165. 
 Pure ; and commands to some, leaves free to aU. — iv. 747. 
 Plagues. They astonished all resistance lost. — ^vi. 838. 
 
 So also when the caesura falls in the middle of a foot, the 
 
 * It is thus that this word is spelt in the correct first edition, as if to obviate 
 the wrong pronunciation usually given to it — JEfgceaw, and this and x. 584 are 
 the only places in the poem where the Greek ot is expressed by «, its represen- 
 tative everywhere else being e accented; as Pygmean^ Lethean^ Orphean^ Sor 
 hean, etc. Hence then we would read, — 
 
 With wide Cerber^an mouths full loud, and rung. — ii. 655. 
 Herculean Samson from the harlot-lap. — ix. 1060. 
 The sun as from Thyestean banquet turned. — x. 688. 
 
 t Being suitors, || should the duchess | deny to match her. — Beaum. and 
 Fletch. : Women Pleased^ i. 1. 
 
 2 G 
 
450 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 first syllable goes to the preceding iamb, and forms a bacchius, 
 while the second makes a monosyllabic foot. 
 
 With loss of Eden, till one greater man. — i. 4. 
 Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire. — ih. 7. 
 Eose out of Chaos. Or if Sion hill. — ib. 10. 
 
 The same principle applies to four-foot and six-foot verse, and 
 to that of all languages in which it is regulated by accent, with 
 the single exception of the poetry of France. 
 
 It thus appears that Milton had the authority of the great 
 Italian poets for the irregularities which Johnson lays to his 
 charge ; and surely the ear of a Johnson was not as susceptible 
 of the varied melody of verse as that of a Petrarca or a Tasso. 
 In fact, we are persuaded that a great poet could not write an 
 inharmonious line ; and that where such occurs, as in Shake- 
 speare, — the author of Venus and Adonis writing such ! — we 
 may be certain that there is an error of the copyist or of the 
 printer.^ But then much depends on the reader ; and as no 
 one to whom nature has not given a musical ear, can ever read 
 poetry as it should be read, few things are more rare than an 
 accomplished reader. Most persons, however great their taste 
 may be, read poetry in what is termed a chanting or singsong 
 manner ;t and, consequently, when the melody is various, as 
 in Milton, much of it is lost, both to the reader himself and 
 to the auditors. We are, in fine, thoroughly convinced that, if 
 properly read, there is not a single inharmonious verse in the 
 entire works of this noble poet. 
 
 * We can neyer believe that Milton did not dictate 
 
 On him who had stolen Jove's authentic fire. — iv. 719 j 
 
 but the printer substituted stole, and it escaped the reader. So also in Comus 
 (v. 195), the edition of 1637 and the Cambridge MS. have stolne, which is 
 changed to stole in the edition of 1645, without any reason, and of course by 
 the printer. The participle stole was little used j we recollect but two instances 
 of it in Shakespeare. 
 t See above, page 298. 
 
451 
 
 COSMOLOai. 
 
 Milton, like Dante, had to create the scene of his poem ; but 
 from the objective turn of his mind, and his persuasion of 
 being aided by the Holy Spirit in the composition of it, it is 
 highly probable that he believed the creations of his imagi- 
 nation to be almost identical with the actual condition of the 
 Universe, and that he was describing the real Heaven, Hell, 
 and Chaos. Hence, while the Paradise of Dante, as being 
 only a figurative representation of things on earth, is vague 
 and indistinct, the Heaven of Milton is as clear and definite 
 as any description of a region on the surface of the globe. 
 
 In the view of Milton, space was infinite. A portion of it, 
 of immense but limited extent, was occupied by Heaven, the 
 abode of the Deity and his Angels ; the rest, under the name 
 
 of Chaos, formed 
 
 a dark 
 Illimitable ocean, without bound, 
 Without dimension, where length, breadth and highth 
 And time and place are lost. — ii. 891. 
 
 Elsewhere it is termed a 
 
 vast, immeasurable abyss, 
 Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, 
 Up from the bottom turned by furious winds 
 And surging waves, as mountains, to assault 
 Heaven's highth and with the center mix the pole. — vii. 211. 
 
 The contents of Chaos are the "embryon atoms," which 
 by their combinations may produce all material substances ; 
 which were used afterwards in the formation of Hell and the 
 
 2 g2 
 
452 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 World ; and which are and will be in ceaseless conflict among 
 themselves. 
 
 Unless the almighty Maker them ordain 
 
 His dark materials to create new worlds. — ii. 915. 
 
 The poet seems,, like the followers of Democritus and Epicurus, 
 to have regarded these atoms as being without origin and 
 external.^ 
 
 In the view of the poet. Heaven, as the fixed abode of the 
 Deity, must have been coetemal with Chaos. Its extent was 
 great, but not boundless ; its form was apparently circular, 
 for when Satan approached it in his fatal voyage from Hell 
 through Chaos, it is said to have 
 
 extended wide 
 In circuit, undetermined square or round. — ii. 1047 ; 
 
 which apparently indicates a circlet of such vast dimensions 
 that the curvature of the portion which the eye of even a su- 
 perior being could take in was imperceptible. As a further 
 means of giving an idea of its enormous magnitude, the poet 
 adds, that as compared with it, the World which hung from it 
 
 was 
 
 in bigness as a star 
 Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. — ii. 1051. 
 
 Around the circumference of Heaven ran a " crystal wall" 
 (vi. 860), 
 
 With opal-towers and battlements adorned 
 Of hving saphir. — ii. 1049. 
 
 In this wall were "blazing portals" (vii. 575), and 
 
 . . . ever-during gates, harmonious sound 
 On golden hinges moving. — vii. 206. 
 
 Within the wall Heaven spread into plains, rose into hills, 
 subsided into vales, and 
 
 • See above, p. 174. 
 
 t Yet he elsewhere speaks of it positively as a square : — 
 And henceforth monarchy with thee divide 
 Of all things, parted by the empyreal bounds, 
 His quadrattire, from thy orbicular world. — x. 379. 
 
COSMOLOGY. 453 
 
 the Kiver of Bliss througli midst of Heaven 
 Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber-stream. — ^iii. 358 j 
 
 while "immortal Amarant" there 
 
 . . . flowers aloft, shading the Foimt of Life. 
 
 The trees of Heaven produce nectar and manna, '' angels' 
 food.'' " Though/' says the Angel to Adam, 
 
 Though in Heaven the Trees 
 Of Life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines 
 Yield nectar ; though from off the boughs each mom 
 We brush meUifluous dews, and find the ground 
 Covered with pearly grain. — v. 426. 
 
 Beneath the surface of the soil lay rocks and various minerals, 
 as on earth (vi. 472 seq.) ; for as the Angel elsewhere says, 
 
 Though what if Earth 
 Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein 
 Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought ! — ^v. 574. 
 
 Like Earth, too. Heaven had its succession of day and night : — 
 
 Evening now approached— 
 Eor we have also our evening and our mom ; 
 We ours for change delectable not need. — v. 627. 
 Now when ambrosial night, with clouds exhaled 
 From that high mount of God whence Hght and shade 
 Spring both, the face of highest Heaven had changed 
 To grateful twilight — for night comes not there 
 In darker veil — and roseate dews disposed 
 All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest. — ^v. 642. 
 AU night the dreadless angel unpursued 
 Through Heaven's wide champaign held his way till Mom, 
 Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand 
 Unbarred the gates of Hght. There is a cave 
 Within the Mount of God, fast by his throne, 
 Where light and darkness in perpetual round 
 Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven 
 Grateftd vicissitude, like day and night : 
 Light issues forth, and at the other door 
 Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour 
 To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well 
 Seem twilight here. And now went forth the Mom, 
 Such as in highest Heaven, arrayed in gold 
 
454 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Empyreal ; from before her vanished Night, 
 Shot through with orient beams. — vi. 1. 
 
 The poet does not mention the mode or the exact time of 
 the formation of Hell. In the battle of the angels, Michael 
 (vi. 276) would seem to speak of it as in existence at that 
 time_, and when God is sending the Son to drive them out of 
 Heaven, he speaks of them as being 
 
 To their prepared ill mansion driven down. — ^vi. 738. 
 
 And it is added : — 
 
 Hell at last 
 Yawning received them whole and on them closed ; 
 Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire 
 Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain. — ^vi. 874. 
 
 The exact situation of Hell of course could not be assigned. 
 It lay in some part of Chaos,"^ 
 
 As far removed from God and light of Heaven 
 
 As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. — i. 73 ; 
 
 that is, three semidiameters of the World. The rebel angels 
 first appear in it, weltering in a lake of liquid fire, while 
 
 A dungeon horrible, on all sides round. 
 As one great furnace flamed. — i. 61. 
 
 Thence extended ^' dry land," which burned 
 
 With sohd, as the lake with Hquid, fire. 
 
 This land, like the soil of Heaven and Earth, contained within 
 it mineral riches, whence Mammon constructs 
 
 Pandsemonium, the high capital 
 Of Satan and his peers. — i. 756. 
 
 When the fallen angels proceeded to explore this land, — 
 
 * This idea occurs in Milton's earlier writings : " To banish for ever into a 
 local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bottom- 
 less gulf of Chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the world's diameter multiplied." 
 — Doctrine of Divorce, b. ii. ch. 4. The idea of HeU being in the centre occvirs 
 also in Paradise Lost : — 
 
 In heaven or earth or under earth in hell. — iii. 321. 
 This however was probably only a shp of his memory. See above, p. 209. 
 
COSMOLOGY. 455 
 
 Through many a dark and dreary vale 
 They passed, and many a region dolorous, 
 O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, 
 Eocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death ; 
 A universe of death, which God by curse 
 Created evil, for evil only good. 
 Where all life dies, death lives and nature breeds 
 Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things. 
 Abominable, unutterable, and worse 
 Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived. — ii. 418. 
 
 Through this region ran the four infernal rivers, Styx, Ache- 
 ron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, while that of Lethe separated it from 
 a " frozen continent," * 
 
 .... dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 
 Of whirlwind and dire hail. — ii. 588. 
 
 The vault of Hell is terminated by a portal. 
 
 And thrice threefold the gates ; three folds were brass. 
 Three iron, three of adamantine rock 
 Impenetrable, impaled with circUng fire, 
 Yet unconsumed. — ii. 645. 
 
 After the expulsion of the rebel angels, the Son of God, 
 
 on the wings of Cherubim 
 Uplifted, in paternal glory rode 
 Far into Chaos and the world unborn. — vii. 218 ; 
 
 and there setting the " golden compasses" of God, he marked 
 out the circumference of the World, which then came into ex- 
 istence under the influence of the Spirit of God. It was a 
 '^ firm opacous globe," L e. a hollow sphere, of which we shall 
 presently describe the interior, restricting ourselves here to 
 the outer surface. 
 
 When Satan lighted on it in coming out of Chaos, 
 
 A globe far off 
 It seemed, now seems a boundless continent, 
 Dark, waste, and wUd, under the frown of night 
 Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms 
 Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky, (iii. 422,) 
 
 * These are also the four rivers of Dante's Hell, and he too places Lethe in 
 a separate region. 
 
456 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 except on the side facing the wall of Heaven, whence came 
 light that made a " glimmering air/' As he proceeded along 
 it he discerned " a gleam of dawning light/' which drew him 
 toward it, and there he saw a " structure high'' of golden stairs 
 ascending up to Heaven, 
 
 At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared 
 The work as of a kingly palace-gate 
 With frontispiece of diamond and gold 
 Embellished ; thick with sparkling orient gems 
 The portal shone.* — iii. 504. 
 
 At the other extremity, on the surface of the globe 
 
 a bright sea flowed . 
 
 Of jasper or of Hquid pearl. 
 
 " Thence," says the Argument, " Satan comes to the gate of 
 Heaven, described ascending by stairs and the waters above 
 the firmament that flow about it," which waters we wiU 
 presently show to be the Crystalline of the Ptolemaic Astro- 
 nomy. Directly opposite the stairs a passage down to the 
 earth opened in the solid globe. 
 
 Milton's idea of the primitive earth was, that it occupied 
 the centre of the world, which had only been created for its 
 use (ix. 103 seq.) . As we have just seen, he makes the angel 
 hint that it resembled heaven ; and the same angel, in his ac- 
 count of creation, says, — 
 
 Earth now 
 
 Seemed hke to heaven, a seat where gods might dweU 
 
 Or wander with deHght, and love to haunt 
 
 Her sacred shades. — vii. 327. 
 
 Earth in her rich attire 
 Consummate lovely smiled. — ih. 501. 
 
 The poet also makes Satan exclaim : — 
 
 O earth ! how like to heaven ! if not preferred 
 More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built 
 With second thoughts, reforming what was old. 
 For what god after better worse would build P— ix. 99. 
 
 * See Excursus I. 
 
COSMOLOGY. 457 
 
 Milton, in fact, taxed his imagination to the utmost in his 
 conception of earth before it had been polluted by the entrance 
 of sin and death, and he was unable to go any farther in that 
 of Heaven. Besides, the language of Scripture, to which he 
 bowed so submissively, led him to believe in the similitude. 
 
458 
 
 THE PTOLEMAIC ASTRONOMY. 
 
 The system of astronomy which, as we have seen, was the one 
 in vogue in Milton^ s time, and which he followed in Paradise 
 Lost, is what is named, but improperly, the Ptolemaic ; for it 
 was the prevalent one many centuries before Ptolemy was born. 
 Plato, for example, tells us in his Republic that the Sirens were 
 seated on the eight celestial spheres, and that it was their me- 
 lodious voices that constituted what was termed the Harmony 
 of the Spheres. The reason probably of its being named from 
 Ptolemy is, that his work is the oldest in which it is developed. 
 
 The book from which Milton evidently derived his astrono- 
 mic ideas was the treatise of Sacro Bosco de Sphsera, with the 
 copious commentary of the Jesuit Clavius : and from that we 
 will endeavour to give a brief sketch of the Ptolemaic system, 
 a "knowledge of which seems absolutely indispensable if we 
 would fully understand Paradise Lost and much of the poetry 
 of the seventeenth and preceding centuries."^ 
 
 At first, as Clavius observes, mankind thought there was but 
 one heaven, which was soKd, in which the stars were fixed and 
 the planets moved, and which made a diurnal revolution round 
 the earth. This, for example, is the view given in the Old Tes- 
 tament. But as it was observed that the planets moved in a 
 contrary direction to the diurnal motion of the heaven, and as 
 it was a maxim in physics that no body can be actuated in it- 
 self at the same time by opposite and contrary motions, it was 
 conceived that each planet must have a sphere of its own, 
 
 * For example, the Paradise of Dante. Camoes gives a pleasing view of the 
 Ptolemaic system in the last book of his poem. 
 
PTOLEMAIC ASTRONOMY. 459 
 
 which carried it along by its revolution in a direction opposite 
 to that of the starry heaven. As the planets were seven in 
 number^ their spheres, with that of the starry heaven, made 
 eight, and that, as we have seen, was the number in the time 
 of Plato. But when, some time after, Hipparchus discovered 
 what is now termed the Precession of the Equinoxes, or re- 
 cession of the point in which the ecliptic and the equinoctial 
 line intersect each other, it became apparent that there was a 
 peculiar motion in the starry sphere also, and therefore there 
 must be a sphere external to it which caused the diurnal revo- 
 lution. The number thus became nine, and the external one, 
 which gave motion to the whole, was named the Primum Mo- 
 bile. In this state astronomy came into the hands of the 
 Christians, and as the cosmogony in Genesis spoke of the 
 waters above the firmament, a tenth sphere seemed requisite.* 
 "The ninth, or rather niath and tenth spheres combined," 
 says our authority, "is the waters above the firmament, and, 
 on account of its lucidity and perspicuity, as there are no 
 denser parts as in the other orbs, such as the stars, may best 
 be called by the name of waters. Some theologians therefore 
 term it the Watery or Glacial, others the Crystalline Heaven." 
 But, exclusive of these nine or ten movable spheres. Venera- 
 ble Bede and others affirm that there is another heaven, im- 
 movable, and without any star in it, the region and happy 
 abode of the Angels and the Blest. This they name from fire, 
 the Empyrean Heaven, because it is marvellously lucid and 
 endued with the highest degree of brilliancy. It was supposed 
 to envelope the movable spheres, and the motion of the Pri- 
 mum Mobile was believed to proceed from it.f 
 
 The earth thus formed the centre of the created world or 
 
 * This idea of a tenth sphere would seem to have been rather a late notion ; 
 for Dante, in his Poem and his Convito, speaks only of nine movable spheres 
 beside the fixed Empyrean. 
 
 t This order of the spheres is frequently noticed by Dant«, but the best 
 poetic view of it is that of Camoes. He thus describes the Empyrean : — 
 Este orbe que primeiro va cercando 
 Os outros mais pequenos, que en si tern, 
 Que estd com luz tao clara radiando, 
 Que a vista cega, e a mente vil tambem, 
 
460 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 universe. It was a globe, and was surrounded to a certain 
 height by the air_, the space between which and the sphere of 
 the moon was, according to some astronomers, — for they were 
 not all agreed on the subject, — filled with fire, the sether of the 
 ancients.^ The sphere of the Moon was succeeded by that of 
 Mercury, because he was the most irregular in his motions, 
 and this irregularity was held to be greater, the greater the 
 distance from the Primum Mobile. Then came those of Ve- 
 nus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the Starry Heaven, 
 the Primum Mobile, and the Crystalline. They all, says Cla- 
 vius, lie close together, fitting into each other like the coats of 
 an onion. Motion is given to the whole, as some said, by the 
 Animus Mundi ; according to Dante and other Christian phi- 
 losophers, by the Deity himself, whose peculiar abode was the 
 Empyrean. The Primum Mobile, as being the external sphere, 
 moved of course the fastest, as we may observe in the revolu- 
 tion of a wheel. The motion of the whole, as given by the 
 Primum Mobile, was from east to west, while the interior 
 spheres moved by their own power from west to east, just as a 
 man in a ship can walk from stem to stern while the ship is 
 under sail. The motion of the stars and planets with their 
 spheres, is also likened to that of a knot in a table with the 
 table, or a nail in a wheel with the wheel. 
 
 The irregularity however of the motions of the planets re- 
 quired additional machinery for their explanation, and various 
 circles were therefore devised. Among these, we may notice 
 those called the -Equant and the Deferent, and the Epicycle, 
 which they all had except the Sun, who, of course, from the 
 real state of the case, must have appeared to be the least irre- 
 
 Umpyreo se nomea, onde logrando 
 
 Puras almas estao de aquelle bem 
 
 Tamanlio que elle sd se entende e alcanna, 
 
 De que nao ha no mundo semelh.an9a. — Os Lusiadas, x. 81. 
 
 * Dante also (Par. i. 58) notices the sphere of fire. Ariosto, when describing 
 Astolfo's journey to the moon with St. John, says, 
 Ruotando il carro per 1' aria levossi 
 E tosto in mezzo il faoco etenao giunse. 
 Tutta la sfera varcano del fuoco 
 Ed indi vanno al regno della luna. — Orl, Fur. xxxiv. 69, 70 
 
PTOLEMAIC ASTRONOMY. 461 
 
 gular. The Epicycle, according to Clavius, " is a small orb, 
 immersed in the Deferent orb in which the planet is borne. 
 For the body of the planet is fixed in the Epicycle, while the 
 centre of the Epicycle is continually carried along according to 
 the motion of the eccentric or deferent orb/' 
 
 It appears to have been this latter part of the system which 
 gave least satisfaction to the mind of Milton, for he makes the 
 
 Angel say, — 
 
 He his fabric of the heavens 
 Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move 
 His laughter at their quaint opinions wide 
 Hereafter, when they come to model heaven 
 And calculate the stars, how they will wield 
 The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive. 
 To save appearances, how gird the sphere 
 With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er. 
 Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb. — viii. 76. 
 
 Had it not been for his enthralment to the letter of Scrip- 
 ture, in all probability Milton, in whose mind the love of order 
 and simplicity was so strong, would have gladly embraced the 
 Copernican system, which he describes so clearly a few lines 
 after the passage just quoted. The same spirit of submission 
 to Scripture also caused him to deviate from the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy with respect to the Empyrean ; and perhaps it was 
 that, or the secret influence of the Copernican system, which 
 caused him to suppose a Chaos beyond the World ; for the 
 Empyrean of the current system would seem to have had no- 
 thing exterior to it. 
 
 In another point Milton seems to depart from his authori- 
 ties. They, as we have seen, make the lucid Empyrean to form 
 the outer orb, while he describes the outer orb, on the verge 
 of Chaos, as being 
 
 Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night 
 Starless exposed. — iii. 424 ; 
 
 and it is clear that he places it beyond all the other spheres, 
 
 for he says, — 
 
 They pass the planets seven and pass the fixed, 
 And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs 
 The trepidation talked, and that first moved, (iii. 481,) 
 
462 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 ere they arrive at the "foot of heaven's ascent;" which he 
 describes as being on the outer sphere. We also see here, 
 that he places the Primum Mobile external to the Crystalline, 
 which last he makes to cause the trepidation of the Starry 
 Heaven, i. e. the precession of the equinoxes, which was gene- 
 rally held to be the proper motion of that sphere. There is 
 also some confusion where he says that the World was 
 
 Bmlt on circumflnous waters, calm, in wide 
 Crystalline ocean and the loud misrule 
 Of Chaos far removed. — ^vii. 270 ; 
 
 for from this we might infer that the Crystalline was external 
 to and did not form part of the world, while there was also a 
 separation, perhaps the ' opacous globe,' between it and Chaos. 
 Again, Milton, by adopting the erroneous notion of the air 
 being the Mosaic firmament, makes great confusion in his 
 cosmology. 
 
 And God made 
 
 The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure. 
 
 Transparent, elemental air, diffused 
 
 In circuit to the uttermost convex 
 
 Of this great round, partition firm and sure 
 
 The waters underneath from those above 
 
 Dividing.—vii. 263.* 
 
 As the 'waters underneath' are the ocean and seas of earth, 
 and 'those above' are the Crystalline, the whole Ptolemaic 
 system of spheres seems to be cast aside ; unless we suppose, 
 which no astronomer ever did, that the air penetrated and 
 went beyond them, being the support of the Crystalline. But 
 the truth is, taking what view we will of the cosmology of Ge- 
 nesis, it is quite incompatible with the Ptolemaic astronomy. 
 
 * Satan fix>m the lower stair of heaven 
 
 Dovm right into the World's first region throws 
 
 His flight precipitant, and winds with ease 
 
 Through the jmre marble air his obhque way. — iii. 562 ; 
 
 and he directs his course to the sun "through the calm firmament ^ 
 
463 
 
 EDEN AND PARADISE. 
 
 For blissful Paradise 
 Of God the Garden was, by him in the east 
 Of Eden planted. Eden stretched her line 
 From Auran eastward to the royal towers 
 Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings. 
 Or where the sons of Eden long before 
 Dwelt in Telassar. In this pleasant soil 
 His far more pleasant garden God ordained. 
 Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow 
 All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste ; 
 And all amid them stood the tree of life 
 High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit 
 Of vegetable gold ; and next to life 
 Our death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by. 
 Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill. 
 Southward through Eden went a river large, 
 Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill 
 Passed underneath ingulphed ; for God had thrown ' 
 That mountain as his garden-mould high raised 
 Upon the rapid current, which through veins 
 Of porous earth with kindly thirst updrawn, 
 Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill 
 Watered the garden ; thence united fell 
 Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood 
 Which from his darksome passage now appears, 
 And now, divided into four main streams, 
 E-uns diverse, wandering many a famous realm 
 And country, whereof here needs no account. — iv. 210*^2'. 
 
 In this localization of Eden and the^happy garden, Milton's 
 love for geographic specification appears as in other parts of 
 his poems. The Scripture account of Eden is highly indefinite^ 
 
464 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 and involved, so to say, in the misty veil of venerable tradition. 
 God planted, it says, a garden in the east of Eden [Delight), 
 and a ^' river went out of Eden to water the garden, and thence 
 it was divided and became four main streams/^ The names of 
 these streams are Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel [Tigris),'^ and Eu- 
 phrates. As it is quite clear that there is nowhere on the ac- 
 tual surface of the earth any water-system corresponding with 
 this, and most certainly the Tigris and Euphrates are not arms 
 of any one great main stream, it is utterly vain for us to seek 
 for Eden in the mountains of Armenia, or, with Milton, in the 
 plains of Mesopotamia. 
 
 Milton was led to this supposition by those passages of Scrip- 
 ture in which Eden occurs as a proper name, and he too pre- 
 cipitately concluded that they must be the same with the ori- 
 ginal region of that name. The prophet Amos (i. 5) mentions 
 apparently a small kingdom called Beth-Eden [House of Eden, 
 or Abode of Joy) in connection with Damascus, and Ezekiel 
 (xxvii. 23) names Eden in connection with Haran and Can- 
 neh, places in Mesopotamia, and elsewhere (2 Kings xix. 12), 
 "the children of Eden which were in Thelasar^^ are spoken 
 of along with Haran and other places in its vicinity. Milton 
 then combines these notices, and he extends the region of 
 Eden from the Hauran [Auronitis), a district south of Da- 
 mascus, to Seleucia on the Tigris, his imagination bestowing 
 antediluvian verdure and fertility on the sandy wastes be- 
 tween Damascus and the Euphrates. We say that he gives 
 it this extent, notwithstanding that the annotators make his 
 Auran to be Haran on the Euphrates ; for he gives this place 
 its proper name (xii. 131), and though here, in his usual man- 
 ner, he omits the incipient h, he never would change a into au. 
 
 In the original narrative, the garden, like the oriental para- 
 dises or parks, is represented as lying in a plain, with a river 
 flowing through it : Dante, in accordance with the peculiar 
 character of his poem, and taking advantage of the figurative 
 language of the prophet Ezekiel,t placed the terrestrial Para- 
 
 * Milton (ix. 71) names the original river Tigris, even before it entered the 
 garden. t Ezek. xxviii. 2, 12-14, Vul^. 
 
EDEN AND PARADISE. 465 
 
 dise on the summit of a mountain surrounded by the sea in 
 the Antarctic hemisphere, and Ariosto on a mountain in the 
 heart of Africa, beyond the Line. Hence probably Milton 
 conceived the idea of making a mound cast up over the river 
 ' of Eden the site of the Garden ; he derived, it is likely, the 
 idea of the "fresh fountain^^ from the LXX., who have/ow/z- 
 tain instead of mist, in Gen. ii. 6. 
 
 To obviate the objection that the site of the Garden is no- 
 where now to be found, Milton hazards the assertion (xi. 829) 
 that at the time of the Deluge the mound was swept away by 
 the returning waves and carried into the Persian Gulf, where 
 it became an " island salt and bare,^^ to prove, as he says, that 
 
 God attributes to place 
 No sanctity, if none be thither brought 
 By men who there frequent, or therein dwell. — ^xi. 836. 
 
 2 H 
 
406 
 
 PNEUMATOLOGY. 
 
 Milton placed in Chaos a number of allegoric personages, 
 such as Chaos himself, Night his spouse_, Rumour, Chance, 
 Discord, etc., but they are, of course, inactive, and take no 
 part in the action of the poem. 
 
 Heaven is the abode of God, the Almighty Father, his Son, 
 and it is to be presumed, the Holy Spirit, though his persona- 
 lity is dubiously noticed in the poem. The remaining deni- 
 zens of Heaven are the Angels, infinite in number and divided 
 into difierent ranks and degrees. 
 
 St. Paul, in more than one place in his Epistles, mentions 
 different titles of rank with relation to the Angels, which he 
 terms Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers. The 
 Fathers, as usual, working on this foundation, constructed a 
 celestial hierarchy, which we find fully developed in the work 
 of the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Using those four 
 titles, and adding to them, under the name of Virtues {Virtutes, 
 i. e. mights or powers), another term {^wdfiei^) which occurs 
 in the Epistle to the Romans (viii. 23),^ then making Angels 
 of the Seraphim and Cherubim of tlie Old Testament, and 
 finally, two orders of the Angels and Archangels, he formed 
 nine orders, corresponding with the nine celestial spheres, 
 which he arranged in three triads in the following manner : — 
 
 Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, 
 Dominations, Virtues, Powers, 
 Principalities, Arcliangels, Angels. 
 
 Dionysius uses not merely Angel, but Virtue, as a term ap- 
 
 * See also 1 Peter iii. 22. 
 
PNEUMATOLOGY. 4G7 
 
 plicable to every member of the celestial hierarchy, in which 
 he is followed by Milton, who (v. 371) calls the Archangel Ra- 
 phael an Angelic Virtue.* 
 
 Dante, both in his poem and in his prose works, adopts this 
 division, and expatiates on it — of course with his own pecu- 
 liar political views : his arrangement is : — 
 
 Seraphim, Cherubim, Powers, 
 Dominations, Virtues, Principalities, 
 Thrones, Archangels, Angels. 
 
 We also find this system in Tasso's great poem. The fol- 
 lowing lines from Drayton^ s Man in the Moon will show how 
 it had already made its way into English poetry. 
 
 Those hierarchies, that Jove's great will supply. 
 Whose orders formed in triplicity, 
 Holding their places by the treble Trine, 
 Make up that holy theologic line ; 
 Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, that rise 
 As the first three ; when Principalities 
 With Dominations, Potestates are plac'd 
 The second ; and the Ephionian last. 
 Which Virtues, Angels, and Archangels be. 
 
 We have seen above that Milton, adhering to the plain Ian- ,, 
 guage of Scripture, has boldly assigned a human form and hu- f 
 man passions to the Father; the same he has done to the Son; 
 the Spirit is left by him in obscurity. He does not intimate 
 that these divine persons stood in need of food, but the Angels 
 he makes in most respects like man. Thus they eat and drink 
 (v. 630), they sleep {v. 654), they dance and sing {v. 619), and 
 burn incense (vii. 659) before the throne of God. Their mu- 
 sical instruments are similar to those used on earth (v. 594). 
 They also have arms and armour like to those of men. The 
 angels of all orders are, contrary to Scripture, furnished with 
 wings, which constitutes the chief difierence between their ap- 
 pearance and that of man. 
 
 These celestial beings had dwelt for countless ages in su- 
 
 * This however is of no importance, as he had a little before (v. 277) termed 
 him a Seraph. 
 
 2 H 2 
 
468 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 preme bliss_, beneath the sole dominion of God, till on a time 
 they were all summoned to appear before his throne, when he 
 announced to them that on that day he had begotten him whom 
 he declared to be his only son, and who was henceforth to reign 
 
 i over them as his vicegerent. This announcement excited jea- 
 lousy and discontent in the mind of Lucifer, one of the prime 
 of the celestial hierarchs, and he drew off a third part of the 
 inhabitants of Heaven to his government in the north, and 
 there raised the standard of revolt. The faithful angels v/ere 
 sent to oppose them, and battles were fought, till the Son came 
 borne on the Cherubic Car of the Father, and drove them out 
 of Heaven into Chaos, falling tlirough which for the space of 
 nine days. Hell finally received them and closed over them. 
 
 We have seen that five of the names of the celestial hie- 
 rarchies were taken from terms used by St. Paul. Angel is 
 a word of constant occurrence in the Scriptures, and is the 
 Greek translation of the Hebrew rnaldk (^^^^P) "^ messenger, 
 envoy,' as it was chiefly in that character that they appeared 
 to mankind. The term Archangel appears but once in Scrip- 
 ture, namely in the dubious epistle of Jude, where it is ap- 
 plied to Michael, who in the book of Daniel is styled " the 
 great prince.'^ The Cherubim are properly the bearers of the 
 portatile throne of Jehovah, and Avere not regarded as angels 
 by the ancient Israelites; and the Seraphim, who only occur in 
 the vision of Isaiah, were, as we hope to be able to prove, the 
 same as the Cherubim. 
 
 Milton derived the names of nearly all his good and evil 
 
 * angels from the Scriptures. A few are the names given there 
 to angels, others those of the gods of the heathen, the re- 
 mainder names of men transferred to angels. These we will 
 now proceed to explain. We must however previously observe 
 that the ideas of the Israelites respecting angels seem to have 
 been very much modified by tke Light-^religion of Persia, with 
 which they became acquainted during the Captivity. We now 
 find seven principal angels spoken of, answering to the seven 
 Amshaspands of Zoroastric theology, and proper names given 
 to some of them ; we also meet with Satan, occupying as it 
 
PNEUMATOLOGY. ♦ 469 
 
 were the place of the Persian Ahriman ; for in the parts of 
 Scripture written before or during the Captivity there is no 
 clear allusion to such a personage. From the idea of the 
 Zoroastric Ferwers came that of Guardian Angels of indi- 
 viduals (Matt, xviii. 10; Acts xii. 7), of kingdoms (Dan. x. 
 13) J and of the elements (Rev. xvi. 5), and the best explana- 
 tion of the Angels of the Churches in the Revelation is, that 
 they are the Guardian Angels of these societies of Christians 
 — answering in this, as in so many other points, to the Genii 
 of the Roman religion.^ 
 
 We will now explain the names of angels, good and evil, 
 used by Milton. 
 
 1. Michael (S^''''? who as God?) first appears in Daniel 
 (x. 13) as the patron of Israel before God; in the Apocalypse 
 (xii. 2) he is the leader of the good angels in the war against 
 the Dragon and his angels. In the epistle of Jude allusion is 
 made to a contest between Michael and Satan about the body 
 of Moses, as related in some apocryphal book. 
 'A 2. Gabriel (^i<'"!?a Man of God) ii also introduced in Da- 
 niel (viii. 16, ix. 21) as the instructor of the prophet. He is 
 sent to announce to Zacharias the birth of John the Baptist 
 (Luke i. 19), and to Mary the birth of Jesus (v. 26). 
 
 3. Raphael (^^^'] whom God heals) is in Chronicles (1, xxvi. 
 7) the proper name of a man ; but in the apocryphal book 
 of Tobit he is an angel who under a human form accompanies 
 the hero's son Tobias, and displays a healmg power by driving 
 away the evil spirit from Sarah and by curing the blindness 
 of Tobit himself. 
 
 4. Uriel (?)^^>1^ Light of God) does not appear in the 
 Scriptures. His name however occurs in the apocryphal 
 fourth book of Esdras (x. 28), and in the writings of the 
 Rabbin. These last say that these four angels stand around 
 the throne of God ; Michael on the right, Uriel on the left, 
 Gabriel in front, and Raphael in the rear — the respective sta- 
 tions of Reuben, Dan, Judah, and Ephraim in the camp of 
 Israel in the wilderness. — Par. Lost, iii. 648, iv. 555. 
 
 * See our Mythology of Grreece and Italy, third edition: Genius. 
 
470 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 5. Abdiel p^??X^ Servant of God), the name of the father 
 of one of the servants of the king of Judah who were ordered 
 to seize the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. xxxvi. 26), used by the 
 poet as the name of an angel. It is the same as the Arabic 
 'Abdallah.— Par. Lost, v. 805. 
 
 G. Zophiel p^.''?^ Watchman of God) . As this name does 
 not occur in Scripture, nor, as far as we are aware, in the 
 Rabbinic writings, it is probably a coinage of the poet^s own, 
 to suit the office assigned to this angel. — Par. Lost, vi. 535. 
 
 7. Ithuriel (?^?^71n^ Searcher of God). This name also has 
 been coined by the poet, to correspond with the office of the 
 angel. It should have been Yethuriel. — Par. Lost, iv. 788. 
 
 8. Zephon (jisv a looking-out), the name of the head of 
 one of the families of the tribe of Gad (Numb. xxvi. 15). — 
 Par. Lost, iv. 788. 
 
 9. Uzziel (^^?''ty Might of God), a frequent proper name 
 in Scripture: see Exod. vi. 18; Numb. iii. 19. — Par. Lost, iv. 
 782. 
 
 The names of the fallen angels are, as might be expected, 
 much more numerous ; they are as follows : — 
 
 10. Satan (i^^ Adversary). This name, in our opinion, 
 does not occur in the portions of Scripture written before the 
 return from Babylon ; for thougli the body of the book of 
 Job was probably composed in the seventh century b. c, the 
 introduction may have been written or modified at a later 
 period, and Satan have been then introduced ; just as the 
 place in which it is said (2 Sam. xxiv. 1), " The anger of the 
 Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against 
 them to say. Go, number Israel and Judah,'^ becomes in the 
 long posterior Chronicles (1, xxi. 1), '^And Satan stood up 
 against Israel and provoked David to number Israel.^^ 
 
 The Satan of the Jews was then evidently the Zoroastric 
 Ahriman, but with far more limited powers. In the book of 
 Job we find him appearing with the angels before Jehovah in 
 heaven, and, though inclined to cause evil, unable to do so 
 without his permission. He appears again in Zechariah (iii. 1) 
 as standing before the angel of the Lord at tlie right hand of 
 
PNEUMATOLOGY. 471 
 
 the higli-priest Joshua ^^ to resist him/^ These are the only 
 notices of Satan in the Old Testament : he is probably meant 
 in the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon where it is said (ii. 24), 
 " through the envy of the Devil (Bia^oXov) death came into 
 the world/' in allusion to the Fall of Adam. In the New 
 Testament he holds a prominent place, as the chief of the evil 
 spirits, the opponent of God and the tempter and punisher of 
 men. Josephus never mentions him. 
 
 11. Beelzebub (^nj Sj;3 Fly-lord) was the name of the 
 god worshiped at the Philistine city of Ekron, where he gave 
 oracular responses (2 Kings i. 2) . He seems to have been re- 
 garded as a protecting deity against the flies, mosquitoes, etc., 
 which are so annoying in warm countries, and to have an- 
 swered to the Zeus Apomyios of Greece, — perhaps was the same 
 with him, if the theory of the Philistines having been a colony 
 from Greece be correct. In the New Testament he seems to 
 be identical with Satan, as the proper name of the chief of the 
 evil spirits. 
 
 12. Moloch {"^hb King) was the God of the Ammonites 
 (1 Kings xi. 7) to whom children were offered in sacrifice, 
 which was termed "passing through the fire," as they were 
 burnt-offerings ; it however is not improbable that they were 
 previously put to death. From the time of king Ahaz the 
 worship of Moloch prevailed greatly at Jerusalem, where his 
 altar stood in the Valley of the son of Hinnom, on the south 
 side of the city. The Rabbin say that his image was of brass, 
 of the human form, but with the head of an ox ; it was hollow, 
 and heated from beneath, and its arms were so formed as that 
 the child could be laid in them, and thus be burned to death, 
 while its cries were drowned by the sound of drums. This is 
 probably imaginary; but it is not unlike the description of the 
 statue of Kronos at Carthage, given by Diodorus (xx. 14), to 
 whom human victims were offered. 
 
 13. Chemos (K^i^i Victor?) was a god of the Ammonites 
 (Judges xi. 24) and Moabites ; but chiefly of this last people. 
 Jerome, who is followed by Selden and Milton, held him to be 
 the same as Baal Peor (iiy^ hv2 Lord of the Cleft ?), so named 
 
472 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 perhaps from the site of his temple, in whose honour women 
 violated their chastity (Num. xxv.) . — Par. Lost, i. 406. 
 
 14. Thammuz (TIDn). When Ezekiel in his vision was 
 brought to the temple at Jerusalem, he there saw that " there 
 sat women weeping for Tammuz" (viii. 14) . This is the only 
 notice of this being in the Scriptures ; but the Fathers Cyril 
 and Jerome inferred that he was the same as the Phoenician 
 Adonis, whose worship was afterwards introduced into Greece. 
 — Par. Lost, i. 446. 
 
 15. Astoreth (nwy_ Star?) is the Astarte of the Greeks 
 and Romans. She was a goddess of the Sidonians, whose 
 worship, along with that of Baal, was adopted by Israel even 
 in the days of the Judges (ii. 13, x. 6). She is supposed to 
 have been the Moon or the planet Venus. — Par. Lost, i. 438. 
 It is to be noted, that Milton also (i. 422) uses the plural of 
 this name, Ashtaroth, in the sense of goddesses, in union with 
 Baalim. 
 
 16. Rimmon (t'lJ^"}) was a god of Syria (2 Kings v. 18). 
 The origin of his name is uncertain ; but as it signifies pome- 
 granate, he may have been regarded as a deity of fruitfulness, 
 of which that fruit was a symbol. — Par. Lost, i. 467. 
 
 17. Nisroch (PP?), a god of the Ninevites (2 Kings xix. 
 37), about whom nothing certain is known. — Par. Lost, vi. 
 447. 
 
 18. Adrammelech ('^^^'^1^, Splendour of the king), an idol 
 which the colonists from Sepharvaim in Mesopotamia brought 
 with them to Samaria (2 Kings xvii. 31).- — Par. Lost, vi. 365. 
 
 19. Ariel (''^''1^:, Lion of God) seems merely to mean, a 
 valiant warrior, a hero, as there are similar compounds in 
 Arabic and Persian. It occurs as a proper name (Ez. viii. 
 16) ; in Isaiah (xxix. 1) it is a title of Jerusalem; and in Eze- 
 kiel (xliii. 15) it signifies the altar of burnt-offering. — Par. 
 Lost, vi. 371. 
 
 20. Arioch ("^i^t^^?), a Chaldean proper name (Dan. ii. 14). 
 It was probably used by the Rabbin as the name of an evil 
 spirit. " As also great Arioch, that is termed the spirit of 
 revenge.'^ — Nash, Pierce Penniless, p. 78. — Par. Lost, vi. 371. 
 
PNEUMATOLOGY. 478 
 
 21. Ramiel ('?^?^P!>, Exaltation of God) is apparently one of 
 the names coined by the poet^ for it does not occur in Scrip- 
 ture. — Par. Lost. vi. 372. 
 
 22. Dagon ( f^i"^, little fish) was the celebrated god of the 
 Philistines. The Rabbin said he had a human head and 
 armsj but was otherwise shaped as a fish. He may however 
 have been merely a sea-god, corresponding with Poseidon. 
 
 23. Asmadai (^ipt^^t?), or Asmodseus. Milton uses both of 
 these names (iv. 168, vi. 365), but evidently means the same 
 being. The former is his name in the Rabbinic writings, 
 where he is said to be the king of the Shedeem, or demons 
 {see Buxtorf, s. v.) ; the latter is his appellation in the book 
 of Tobit, where he appears as a ^ fleshly incubus.^ 
 
 24. Belial pj^^*??, Worthlessness , wickedness) is merely a 
 compound substantive, and in the usual oriental manner, pro- 
 fligate bad men are termed son^ of wickedness. In the New 
 Testament however we meet with Belial, or Beliar, used as 
 synonymous with Satan. 
 
 25. Mammon (^5^^"'^'?, Reliance) is merely a personification 
 of riches as a ground of trust ; see Buxtorf, s.v. We meet 
 with it in the New Testament, Matt. vi. 24. 
 
 26. Azazel (^)J^}V), In Leviticus (xvi. 8, 10, 26) Ave find 
 that on the day of atonement the high priest took two buck- 
 goats and cast lots on them; the one to be for Jehovah, 
 and to be ofifered in sacrifice, the other for Azazel, and to be 
 let go in the wilderness. The question then is, who or what 
 was Azazel ? a name which occurs nowhere else. The most 
 current opinion, that which Milton follows, is, that it was the 
 name of an evil demon, supposed to dwell in deserts and to be 
 appeased by victims. Others think it was the goat itself, as 
 signifying the aver ter or remover, deriving the name from the 
 Arabic verb 'azala, to remove. It is one of those points on 
 which certainty is hardly to be attained. Milton^s motive for 
 making Azazel the infernal standard-bearer, and styling him a 
 cherub (i. 534), was perhaps an erroneous derivation of the 
 name from 'azaz (TTV), to be strong. . 
 
474 
 
 CHERUBIC CAR OF JEHOVAH. 
 
 When Milton resolved to describe the war in heaven as a 
 necessary part of the economy of his poem, he felt himself 
 obliged to employ for that purpose terms taken from the usages 
 of war on earth, and he had the less scruple at doing so, as 
 Scripture speaks of the arms of God himself. Accordingly 
 we find the angels on both sides using the spear and shield, and 
 other arms of offence and defence, and mounted in brazen 
 chariots drawn by "fiery steeds ^^ (vi. 16, 391). The chariots 
 in the "armoury of God^^ seem to have been of a different 
 kind ; for they were endowed with spontaneous motion. Of 
 them Raphael says, — 
 
 Chariots winged 
 
 From the armoury of God, where stand of old 
 
 Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged, 
 
 Against a solemn day harnessed at hand. 
 
 Celestial equipage ; and now came forth 
 
 Spontaneous, for within them spirit lived, 
 
 Attendant on their Lord. — vii. 199. 
 
 Of God^s own chariot it is said — 
 
 . . . Forth rushed with whirlwind sound 
 
 The chariot of paternal Deity, 
 
 Flashing thick flames, wheel w ithin w^heel, undrawn, 
 
 Itself instinct with spirit, hut convoyed 
 
 By four cherubic shapes. Four faces each 
 
 Had wondrous, as with stars their bodies all 
 
 And w ings w ere set with eyes, with eyes the wheels 
 
 Of beryl, and careering fires between : 
 
 Over their head a crystal firmament. 
 
 Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 
 
 Amber and colours of the w atery arch. — vi. 750. 
 
CHERUBIC CAR OF JEHOVAH. 475 
 
 This is evidently what we may term the Cherubic Car, or 
 Portatile Throne of Jehovah, which forms a more conspicuous 
 part of the religious and prophetic imagery of Scripture than 
 critics and readers seem generally to be aware. It is evident 
 that it was the will of the Deity that the mind of the people 
 of Israel should be only raised to a proportionate point of 
 elevation above that of the surrounding nations. Hence the 
 material character of a great portion of their religion, as exhi- 
 bited in the sacrifices, etc. ; hence too their erroneous ideas of 
 cosmogony and cosmology. We have elsewhere hinted at the 
 probability of their having conceived a material mode of com- 
 munication between Heaven and Earth, and in the present in- 
 stance we find a vehicle for Jehovah himself, or his represen- 
 tative angel, corresponding with the chariots of the gods of 
 Hellas and the various vehicles of those of India. Whether 
 our explanation be the right one or not, the fact is undeniable. 
 We Yv ill now proceed to examine the places in Scripture where 
 it appears. As the fullest, though not the earliest, account of 
 it occurs in Ezekiel, and as it is from that place that Milton 
 took his idea of the chariot, we will commence with it. 
 
 I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great 
 cloud and a continuous fire with brightness around it, and from amidst 
 it as the gleam of polished brass, from amidst the fire, and from amidst 
 it the likeness of four living beings ; and tliis was their appearance, 
 they had the likeness of a man, and each had four faces and each had 
 four wings, and their feet were straight feet, and the sole of their feet 
 was like the sole of a calf's foot, and they glittered as the gleaming of 
 shining brass, and man's hands under their wings on their four sides, 
 and the faces and the wings of the four — their wings were joined to- 
 gether — did not turn whe]i they went, they went each straight forwards : 
 and the likeness of their faces — the four had the face of a man, and the 
 face of a lion on the right side, and the face of an ox on the left side, 
 and the face of an eagle. Their faces and their wings were stretched 
 upwards ; they had each two joining each other, and two covering their 
 bodies ; and they went each straight forwards, whither the spirit was to 
 go they went, they did not turn as they went. And the likeness of the 
 living beings — their appearance was as burning coals of fii'e, as the ap- 
 pearance of torches ; fire went among the living beings and it was 
 bright, and lightnings went forth out of the fire ; and the living bemgs 
 ran and returned like the appearance of the flash of Hghtning. 
 
476 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE I.OST. 
 
 And I looked at the living beings, and behold, a wheel on the earth 
 beside (each of) the living beings, with its four faces ; the appearance of 
 the wheels and their workmanship was as the gleam of the Tharshish- 
 stone, and the four had the one likeness, and their appearance and their 
 workmanship as if there was one wheel within another. When they 
 went they went on their four sides ; they turned not when they went. 
 And their felloes were high and were fearful, and they Mere all four 
 round, full of eyes. And when the living beings went the wheels went 
 beside them, and when the living beings rose from tlie earth the wheels 
 rose ; whithersoever the spirit was to go they went, whithersoever the 
 spirit was to go, and the wheels rose along with them, for the spirit of 
 the living being was in the wheels. When those went these went, and 
 when those stood these stood, and when those rose the wheels rose 
 along with them, for the spirit of the living being was in the wheels. 
 And the appearance above the heads of the living beings was a firma- 
 ment, as the gleam of the splendid crystal, stretched out above over their 
 heads ; and under the firmament their wings extended the one to the 
 other ; and each had two which covered their faces, and each had t^o 
 which covered their bodies. And I heard the sound of their wings 
 when they went, like the sound of many waters, like the sound of the 
 Almighty ; a loud sound, as the soimd of a camp, when they stood with 
 their wings down. And there was a sound from above, from the firma- 
 ment that was over their heads, when they stood with their wings down. 
 And above on the firmament which was over their heads, like the ap- 
 pearance of a sapphire stone was the likeness of a throne, and upon the 
 likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man above it. 
 And I saw as the gleam of burnished brass, as the appearance of fire, a 
 brightness around it : from the appearance of his loins upwards, and 
 from the appearance of his loins downwards, I saw as the appearance 
 of fire and brightness around it. As the appearance of the bow that is 
 in the clouds in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the bright- 
 ness around. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of 
 Jehovah. 
 
 In tills description it will be observed that the word Cheru- 
 bim does not occur; but in the tenth chapter, where the pro- 
 phet again decribes the chariot of Jehovah, he employs the 
 term Cherubim, and no other. He there adds, that '^^ their 
 whole flesh, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, 
 and the wheels, were full of eyes.^' 
 
 When we attempt to form a conception of this chariot, w^e 
 must suppose that brilliant ground-plane which the prophet 
 terms a firmament, to be very large and of an oblong form. 
 
CHERUBIC CAR OF JEHOA'^AH. 477 
 
 Under each angle was placed a Cherub, and further back under 
 it, but not advancing so far as to interfere with the free action 
 of the wings of the Cherubim, were the wheels, each oppo- 
 site the centre of the side of the firmament. These wheels 
 resembled an open ring- dial, each consisting of two rings 
 cutting each other at right angles. We may regard the Che- 
 rubim as having four-sided bodies, with a face and a wing at 
 each side; and when they were in motion, the two wings 
 which were at right angles with the line in which they went 
 were employed, while the other two were folded, and so " co- 
 vered their bodies;^' their feet were "straight," i.e. nearly 
 square, so they needed not to turn. The Cherubim must have 
 been conceived of a great height, to correspond with the alti- 
 tude of the wheels. 
 
 There is only one place more in Scripture where we find the 
 Cherubic Car in motion, namely, the eighteenth Psalm. It is 
 there said, " And he rode upon a cherub and did fly ; yea, he 
 did fly upon the wings of the wind." Most persons, we fear, 
 get erroneous ideas in reading this verse, conceiving Jehovah 
 as Counted on a single Cherub ; but Cherub is here what is 
 termed a collective term, and is equivalent to Cherubim, as 
 it is in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, and with which it is 
 used interchangeably in the tenth chapter of Ezekiel. We 
 thus see, that it is the Cherubic Car that is meant here, and 
 possibly by " the wings of the Avind " {ruach, ^>r\) is meant 
 the wings of the Cherubim, in whom there was Spirit [ruach, 
 nn, Ezek. i. 20). 
 
 It would also seem, that this Cherubic vehicle was indicated 
 by the two Cherubim in the Holy-of-holies of the temple and 
 tabernacle. There were only two, either for the sake of con- 
 venience, or because there was only that number in the ori- 
 ginal conception of the vehicle. The phrase, " Thou that 
 dwellest between the Cherubim " would, in this case, more pro- 
 perly be rendered, "Thou that sittest upon the Cherubim." 
 
 By comparing the following place of Daniel (vii. 9) with 
 the passage of Ezekiel given above, it will appear that both 
 prophets mean the same thing. 
 
478 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 I beheld until the thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days 
 seated. His raiment was like white snow, and the hair of his head like 
 pure wool ; his throne was flames of fire, his wheels burning fire ; a 
 stream of fire flowed and went forth from before him. 
 
 Here thrones may be, in the usual manner, i. q. throne ; and 
 the '* stream of fire " may be equivalent to the " firmament^^ 
 of Ezekiel. We may suppose the vehicle to be standing on the 
 earth. It was perhaps deemed needless to mention the Che- 
 rubim. 
 
 And they saw the God of Israel, and beneath his feet was as a work 
 of clear sapphire and as the heaven itself for brightness. — Ex. xxiv. 10. 
 
 This also appears to be EzekieFs firmament. 
 
 Behold a throne was set in heaven, and one seated on the throne, and 
 he that was seated was hke to a jasper and a sardine stone, and a rain- 
 bow was round the throne, like the appearance of an emerald. And 
 round about the throne were four-and-twenty thrones, and upon the 
 thrones were seated four-and-twenty elders ; . . . and from the throne 
 proceed hghtnings and sounds and thunder ; . . . and before the throne 
 as a sea of glass, like unto crystal ; and opposite {iv /xeo-o))* and around 
 the throne, four living beings full of eyes before and behind. And the 
 first was Hke a Hon, and the second Hke an ox, and the third had the 
 face of a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle. And the four 
 living beings having each of them six wings, are full within and with- 
 out of eyes, and they cease not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy 
 Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come — Hev. iv. 3. 
 
 On compaSng this passage with those of Ezekiel and Daniel 
 it will be apparent that the imagery is the same, the .sea of 
 glass, for example, being the firmament. As is usual with pro- 
 phetic imagery, it varies. The Living-beings, i.e. the Che- 
 rubim, appear to have each only one face, and like the Sera- 
 phim of Isaiah they have each six wings and they speak with 
 a Human voice. The scene here is as it were in the temple in 
 heaven, for the altar is in front of the throne (viii. 3). 
 
 We will finally consider the vision of Isaiah : — 
 
 I beheld the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and elevated, and his 
 skirts fiUed the temple ; Seraphim were standing by him ; each had 
 six wings ; with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, 
 
 * See Excursus II. 
 
CHERUBIC CAR OF JEHOVAH. 479 
 
 and with two he flew. And one cried to the other, saying, Holy, holy, 
 holy Jehovah of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. And the 
 foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of the crier, and the 
 house was filled with smoke. 
 
 Here again we think we discern the same imagery, the scene 
 being the temple on earth. The Seraphim, as is evident from 
 the Apocalypse, are only the Cherubim under another name. 
 As Ezekiel calls them the Living-beings, so Isaiah terms 
 them the Burning- or Bright-beings — for that is the mean- 
 ing, of their name (Q''?"^^) . Both here and in the Apocalypse 
 the Cherubim are represented as bearers, who stand about 
 the vehicle which they have laid down, ready to take it up 
 when required. 
 
 We thus see how erroneous is the theory which Milton 
 adopted of the Cherubim and Seraphim being angels. The 
 Cherub p-ll?) was, of course, a being of imagination; what 
 the original conception of its form was it is difficult to con- 
 jecture, most probably that so fully given by Ezekiel. The 
 etymology of the word is uncertain ^"^ some compare the Cheru- 
 bim with the Sphinxes of Egypt, or with the Griffons, the 
 guardians of treasure in the East, as they were set to keep 
 the garden of Eden, and there is a resemblance in the names ; 
 or with Garuda, the bird that is bearer of Vishnu in the my- 
 thology of India. But all is dubious. 
 
 * The proper pronunciation of the word is Kerub. But the LXX. used 
 the Greek letter % ^^ general to express the Hebrew 3, and our translators 
 therefore employed cli. 
 
480 
 
 FORM OF THE SERPENT. 
 
 Milton thus describes the Tempter's -approach to Eve : — 
 
 So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed 
 In serpent, innate bad, and toward Eve 
 Addressed his way, not with indented wave, 
 Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear. 
 Circular base of rising folds, that towered 
 Fold above fold a surging maze ; his head 
 Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes. 
 With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect 
 Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
 Floated redundant. — ix. 494. 
 
 These beautiful lines certainly present distinct images to the 
 mindj but they involve a physical impossibility ; for no animal 
 formed as the serpent is could ever advance in the manner 
 here described^ and it is remarkable that the poet says of him 
 immediately after [v, 631), in apparent contradiction to what 
 he had asserted above, — 
 
 He leading swiftly rolled 
 
 In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, 
 
 To mischief swift. 
 
 And he had before said : — 
 
 Close the serpent sly 
 Insinuating wove with Gordian twine 
 His braided train. — iv. 347. 
 
 We may perceive then that Milton held the prevalent opinion 
 — prevalent even at the present day — that "upon thy belly 
 thou shalt go" was a part of the serpent's doom ; he may 
 however have only meant that he was to lose the power of 
 going in any other way. Now we think that the Scriptural 
 
FORM OF THE SERPENT. 481 
 
 narrative may be relieved of a great difficulty by showing that 
 it is not at all necessary to understand it in this manner. 
 
 The scope of the narrative seems to be^ that to each of the 
 offending parties there was made an addition of suffering and 
 hardship to their previous condition. Thus the man, who had 
 been placed in the Garden of Eden " to dress it and to keep 
 it," was now "in the sweat of his brow "^ to derive his suste- 
 nance from a less genial soil ; the woman, who, from the whole 
 tenour of the narrative, was to bear children, was now to bring 
 them forth " in sorrow," and was to be ruled over by her hus- 
 band. All analogy then leads us to conceive that the serpent 
 always went on his belly, and that the punishment was that, 
 instead of fruits we may suppose, he was to " eat dust," and 
 there was to be enmity between him and the seed of the wo- 
 man. The passage, then, according to all the principles of 
 the He])rew language, may be rendered — " Going upon thy 
 belly thou shalt eat dust," etc. ; and there is no necessity of 
 supposing, with Dr. Adam Clarke, that the serpent was an 
 ape, or of adopting any of the other unnatural solutions of the 
 difficulty that have been offered. 
 
 .2 I 
 
482 
 
 EXCURSUS I. 
 
 JACOB'S DEEAM. 
 
 We know nothing in the whole circle of truth or fiction more calculated 
 to make a profound impression on a susceptible imagination than the 
 dream of Jacob "in the field of Luz." It appears to us however that 
 the full force of the impression has been weakened by the circumstance 
 of all the versions — including that of the LXX. — agreeing to represent 
 Jehovah as standing above the ladder, and thence addressing the slum- 
 bering patriarch. No doubt the words of the original will bear this 
 sense ; but if we can show that they will also allow us to suppose the lad- 
 der rising up indefinitely toward heaven, while Jehovah stands at the 
 head of the slumberer, we think we shall have added strength to the 
 image. 
 
 The Hebrew phrase rendered "stood above'" (nissdb 'dldu, Iv^ ^%^.) 
 occurs again (in the plural) in Gen. xviii. 2, where it is rightly rendered 
 "stood b^ him;" and in vv. 3 and 8 of the same chapter we find the 
 preposition {'al, bV) rendered in a similar manner. Surely then we need 
 not hesitate to understand the phrase in the same sense in Jacob's dream. 
 We have only to suppose that Jehovah was conceived to have descended 
 before the angels. In a similar manner in the Ilias (ii. 20), <tttj d' ap 
 vrrep K€cj)a\rjs is used of the dream sent to Agamemnon, which we must 
 suppose, as it took the form of Nestor, to have stood at the head of the 
 prince, instead of hovering over him in the air.* 
 
 We would make this further observation. In conformity with the 
 designs of Providence, the religious ideas of the people of Israel were 
 of a sensuous and material character, of which we have had an instance 
 in their giving an aerial vehicle to Jehovah himself. The celestial lad- 
 der or stairs may then have formed a portion of the rehgious imagery 
 of Israel, of the real existence of which there may have been no doubt, 
 though only this once, and that in a dream, was it permitted to mortal 
 eye to gaze on it -. it may remind one of the Arabian tradition of the 
 Garden of Irem. We should remember that the angels of the Old 
 
 * As Agamemnon was lying, and the Dream standing, the prep, over is pro- 
 perly employed: it is the same in Jacob's dream. In Gren. xviii. 2 Abraham 
 is sitting and the wayfarers are standing ; in ?;. 3 he is bowed down before them ; 
 in V. 8 they are sitting and he is standing ; and therefore in all these places the 
 prep, over is used : see also Job i. 6 ; Is. vi. 2. So with the Latin sub : it 
 must sometimes be rendered in, as in " Grrato Pyrrha stib antro ;" but the sense 
 of under is always present. 
 
EXCURSUS. 483 
 
 Testament are not represented as having wings, and that therefore a 
 material medium may have been supposed requisite for their passage to 
 and fro between earth and heaven. 
 
 We have seen that Milton makes this ladder a reality, but he seems 
 to terminate it at the World.* We must however recollect that his 
 angels are winged. 
 
 EXCURSUS II. 
 
 "n^ri^, "^TIO J cv /u.€o-<B, dva fiiaov. 
 
 Many erroneous conceptions have, in our opinion, been caused in va- 
 rious places of Scripture by the translators not understanding the true 
 meaning of this phrase. That meaning is, as we shall now show, di- 
 rectly/ opposite, and hence in the middle, as being then opposite all parts. 
 
 And it came to pass when Moses went unto the tabernacle, that all the peo- 
 ple rose up and stood every man at his tent door, and Ipoked after Moses until 
 he was gone into the tabernacle ; and it came to pass as Moses entered into the 
 tabernacle, the cloudy pUlar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, 
 and the Loed talked with Moses ; and all the people saw the cloudy piUar 
 stand at the tabernacle door. . . . And the Loed spake unto Moses face to face, 
 as a man speaketh to his friend. And he turned again into the camp, but his 
 servant Josiiua . . . departed not out of (T]inp) the tabernacle. 
 
 Here translators, commencing with the LXX., from not understand- 
 ing the import of this phrase, have vitiated the meaning of the whole 
 passage ; for the Hebrew does not say that Moses went into the taber- 
 nacle : quite the contrary. What is rendered until he was gone into 
 should be while he was going to, and entered into should be was going 
 to ; finally, not out of should be not from before. We are to observe 
 that the tabernacle stood at some distance from the camp, with the 
 cloudy pillar on it. The people saw Moses going thither with Joshua ; 
 they saw the pillar descend and stand at the door and there converse 
 with Moses, whom they saw return, leaving Joshua after him. Now 
 as they thus witnessed everything, it seems evident that Moses could 
 not have gone into the tabernacle, and the Hebrew does not say that he 
 did so ; and consequently it was before it that Joshua remained. 
 
 In 1 Sam. ix., when Saul and his man had been directed by the maidens 
 whom they met outside of the city to Samuel, "As soon," said they, " as 
 you come to the city ye shall meet him ; " " they went up to the city, going 
 direct Hiri?) to the city, and behold! Samuel was coming out toward 
 
 * In Dante (Par. xxi. terz. 10) it ascends out of sight from the sphere of 
 
 Saturn : — 
 
 Yid' io uno scaleo erctto in suso, 
 Tanto che nol seguiva la mia luce. 
 
484 INTRODUCTION TO PARADISE LOST. 
 
 them; . . . and Saul drew near to Samuel before ("HinB) tke gate." It 
 must be quite manifest, we think, to any one who reads the original, 
 that they did not enter the city. 
 
 Omitting other places of the Old, we will consider those of the New 
 Testament in which eV /xeVoj occurs. " But when Herod's birthday was 
 kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them (eV /xeVa))," Matt, 
 xiv, 6. Here the translators have given the exact sense; for the tables at 
 which the guests lay being at the upper end of the room, she must have 
 danced in the space between them and the door. 
 
 " They found him in the temple, sitting in the midst (eV /xeVo)) of the 
 doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions," Luke ii. 46. 
 Here critics observe that the scholars sat at the feet of the doctors — 
 on the ground, of course — i. e. before them. Render then iv fxeaa as 
 in the above place of Matthew, and all is correct. 
 
 "And I beheld, and lo ! in the midst (ev fxea-a) of the throne and of 
 the four beasts and in the midst of the elders stood a Lamb," Rev. 
 v. 6. "For the Lamb which is in the midst {dva fxea-ov) of the throne," 
 vii. 17. The place where the Lamb stood was on the sea of glass di- 
 rectly opposite the throne, and so he was in the middle of, or opposite 
 C^jina), the beasts and the elders. The employment of dva fiea-ov here as 
 equivalent to eV nea-a will serve to elucidate the following very difficult 
 passage. 
 
 " Is it so that there is not a wise man among you ? no, not one that 
 shall be able to judge between his brethren .?" 1 Cor. vi. 5. This certainly 
 seems plain enough ; but when we look at the Greek, we find that it is 
 between his brother {dva fieaov tov dSeX^oO avrov), an expression which 
 is hard to imderstand. But if we render it in presence of, etc., and re- 
 collect that the parties stood before the judge, the difficulty will be much 
 diminished. 
 
 There are many other passages where this appears to be the right 
 meaning of the phrase ; in the New Testament we may notice the fol- 
 lowing, — Luke xxiv. 36 ; John viii. 3, 9, xx. 19, 26 ; Acts i. 15, iv. 7 ; 
 Col. ii. 14 ; 2 Thess. ii. 7. The second of these appears to be parallel to 
 the place just considered, so that after iv ^ecrco we should supply avrov 
 and not Xdov, as the woman was brought before Jesus as a judge. 
 
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