UC-NRLF 
 
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 MbS 
 
 
 YC 16351 
 
THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 Milton as an Historian 
 
 By 
 
 C. H. Firth 
 
 Fellow of the Academy 
 
 [From the Proceedings of the British Academy, VoL III} 
 
 London 
 
 Published for the British Academy 
 By Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press 
 Amen Corner, 1" 
 
 Price One Shilling net 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 
 
 BY C. H. FIRTH 
 
 FELLOW OF THE ACADEMY 
 
 FEW people ever think of Milton as an historian. His interest in 
 history is revealed to his readers by some similes in Paradise Lost, 1 
 and by those great passages in Paradise Regained embodying his 
 conception of Roman rule and Athenian culture, 2 but his historical 
 writings are of such slight importance compared to his pamphlets 
 and his poetry, that they are almost forgotten. Yet Milton's History 
 of Britain is worth studying. It elucidates both his political writings 
 and his poems ; like all that he wrote, it bears the impress of his 
 character, and is, therefore, of some biographical value ; finally, the 
 book in itself is a work of learning and originality, worthy to be 
 remembered in any account of the development of historical writing 
 in England. 
 
 The full title of the book is < The History of Britain, that part 
 especially now called England, from the first traditional Beginning 
 continued to the Norman Conquest. Collected out of the antientest 
 and best authors thereof by John Milton.' 3 It was published in 
 1670 by James Allestry, as a quarto volume of about 350 pages, 
 costing five shillings. Eleven years later, in 1681, appeared a little 
 pamphlet of twelve pages, entitled 'Mr. John Milton's Character 
 of the Long Parliament and the Assembly of Divines', which 
 purported to be a passage of the History suppressed by the licenser 
 when the book was published, and is usually inserted in modern 
 editions at the beginning of the third part of the History* 
 
 The early history of Britain had long occupied Milton's mind. 
 We can trace the progress of his studies and the growth of his 
 schemes up to the moment when he began to write the book which 
 some four-and-twenty years later he gave to the world. The notes 
 contained in his Common-place Book (written apparently in the 
 interval between leaving Cambridge in 1632 and visiting Italy in 
 1638) prove that he had carefully read the Chronicles of Holinshed, 
 
 1 Paradise Lost, i. 351-5 ; x. 306-11. 2 Paradise Regained, Book iv. 
 
 3 See Masson's Life of Milton, vi. 642-8 ; Arber, The Term Catalogues, i. 277, 443. 
 
 4 Milton's Prose Works, ed. Mitford, iii. 94-101 ; Masson, vi. 906-12. 
 
 H 1 
 
 218572 
 
OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 Stow, and Speed, 1 as well as several foreign historians. 2 It is clear 
 that at that time the ' first traditional beginning ' of British history 
 attracted him most, and twice in the Latin verses written during the 
 year 1639 he expressed his resolve to make these legends the subject 
 of an epic poem. In the Epitaphium Damonis he declared that his 
 future theme should be the coming of the Trojans, and the fortunes 
 of the line of Brutus : 
 
 'Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per aequora puppes 
 Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniae, 
 Brennumque Arviragumque duces, priscumque Belinum, 
 Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos ; 
 Turn gravidam Arturo fatali fraude logernen, 
 Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlois arma, 
 Merlini dolus.' 3 
 
 In the Epistle to Mansus, written a few months earlier, his chosen 
 theme was to be the life of King Arthur : 
 
 6 Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges, 
 Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem, 
 Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae 
 Magnanimos Heroas et (O modo spiritus adsit) 
 Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges.' 4 
 
 Once more, in 1642, in his fourth pamphlet, he returned to his 
 project. It was his purpose, he declared, to add to the fame of his 
 native country by his writings. Hitherto its history had been 
 meanly written. 'If the Athenians 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.' 5 To him it appeared that ' our own ancient stories ' 
 supplied fit matter for a poem, and he was deliberating over the 
 
 1 A Common-place Book of John Milton, ed. by A. H. Horwood, pp. 9, 10, 22, 
 25, 27, 31 ; cf. Masson, Life of Milton, i. 303, 645, 736, vi. 790. 
 
 * In Milton's Apology for Smectymnuus, published in 1642, he speaks of his early 
 historical reading : ' Some years I spent in stories of those Greek and Roman 
 exploits, wherein I found many things both nobly done and worthily spoken.' 
 He explains that when he came to the period of Constantino the Great the 
 history of the Church proved intolerably repulsive. Prose Works, i. 269, 318. 
 
 3 Epitaphium Damonis, 11. 162-8; Masson, Life of Milton, ii. 84-94. Dated 
 by Masson about October, 1639. 
 
 4 Mansus, 11. 80-4 ; Masson, Life, i. 524. 
 
 5 Milton is here referring to an observation made by Sallust : f Atheniensium 
 res gestae, sicuti ego aestumo, satis amplae magnificaeque fuere, verum aliquanto 
 minores tamen quam fama feruntur, sed quia provenere ibi scriptorum magna 
 ingenia, per terrarum orbem Atheniensium facta pro maxumis celebrantur.' 
 Sallust, Catiline, 8. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 3 
 
 question ' what king or knight before the Conquest might be chosen 
 in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero. 1 * 
 
 One doubt, however, was still unresolved : whether it was best 
 to adopt for his poem the epic or the dramatic form, and which 
 of the two would be ' more doctrinal and exemplary ' to his country- 
 men. For some time a tragedy with a chorus, after the antique 
 model, had seemed the form best suited for his purpose, and about 
 1640 he jotted down on paper a long list of possible subjects, with 
 brief notes as to the way of treating them. Of these subjects, 
 numbering ninety-nine in all, sixty-one were scriptural and thirty- 
 eight from British history, and it is noticeable that the subjects of 
 the British tragedies were chosen not from the legendary period, but 
 the times between the Roman conquest and the year 1066. 2 
 
 None of these various schemes was realized in the form in which 
 it was first conceived. The tragedy of ' Adam Unparadised ' became 
 ultimately the epic of Paradise Lost ; the epic on Arthur and the 
 ' British Tragedies ' developed into the prose History of Britain. 
 
 We can trace with tolerable accuracy the progress of the History of 
 Britain. Milton began to write it after the conclusion of the series 
 of pamphlets on divorce (March 1645), and after the close of the first 
 Civil War (June 1646). It is probable that by the end of 1647 he 
 had completed the first and second books, since the original introduc- 
 tion to the third book must have been written, judging from its tone, 
 about the close of 1647 or the beginning of 1648. It is certain, on 
 Milton's own evidence, that by March 1649, when he became Secretary 
 to the Council of State, he had finished four out of the six books, and 
 had brought the story down to the union of England under the rule 
 of Egbert. He tells us that he then intended to relate the history 
 of England from its first beginnings to his own day. 3 But this 
 intention was never fulfilled. At some period after 1649 Milton 
 wrote the fifth and the sixth books, which contain the story of the 
 Danish invasions and the Norman conquest, but he proceeded no 
 further. His blindness proved no doubt too great an obstacle. 4 
 
 1 Masson, ii. 361, 385 ; The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty. 
 Prose Works, i. 145. 
 
 2 Ibid., 106 ; Aldis Wright, pp. 35, 36. 
 
 3 He says : ' ad historiam gentis, ab ultima origine repetitam, ad haec usque 
 tempera, si possem, perpetuo filo deducendam, me converti.' Defensio Secunda, 
 Mitford's ed. of Milton's Prose Works, iv. 293. 
 
 4 Milton probably resumed the History of Britain about the end of 1655, since 
 he published his Pro Se Defensio in August 1655, and, having completed the 
 Salmasius controversy, had time at his disposal. f Being now quiet from State 
 adversaries and public contests,' says Phillips, ' he had leisure again for his own 
 studies and private designs.' In March 1657 he was inquiring about the cost of 
 
4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 The purpose which Milton set before himself when he began to 
 write is clearly explained in the exordium to his History : 
 
 ' The beginning of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books 
 have spoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but 
 the deeds of many succeeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly 
 unknown, or obscured and blemished with fables. ... Of British 
 affairs, from the first peopling of the island to the coming of Julius 
 Caesar, nothing certain, either by tradition, history, or ancient fame, 
 hath hitherto been left us. That which we have of oldest seeming, 
 hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been long rejected 
 for a modern fable. 
 
 ' Nevertheless, there being others, besides the first supposed author, 
 men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for 
 approved story which the former explode for fiction ; and seeing 
 that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been 
 after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of some- 
 thing true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little 
 believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned ; 
 I have therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of these 
 reputed tales ; be it for nothing else but in favour of our English 
 poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them 
 judiciously. 
 
 * . . . I intend not with controversies and quotations to delay or 
 interrupt the smooth course of history; much less to argue and 
 debate long who were the first inhabitants, with what probabilities, 
 what authorities each opinion hath been upheld ; but shall endeavour 
 that which hitherto hath been needed most, with plain and lightsome 
 brevity, to relate well and orderly things worth the noting, so as 
 may best instruct and benefit them that read.' 1 
 
 It is evident that for the moment the truth of the facts related 
 was less important in Milton's eyes than the manner in which they 
 were related. History meant to him, when he began, merely the art 
 of story-telling. As he hinted, the early history of England had 
 been lengthily and tediously told in the ponderous volumes of his 
 predecessors. In Holinshed's Chronicle 202 pages are required to 
 reach the battle of Hastings, out of which 22 pages are devoted to 
 the legendary period before the landing of Caesar. Speed expends 
 
 editions of Byzantine historians, which is evidence that his mind was once more 
 turned to historical studies (see Masson, Life of Milton, v. 225, 284). 
 
 There is also another piece of evidence. On pp. 273, 287 of his History he 
 refers to ' the Chronicle attributed to John Brompton, a Yorkshire Abbot, 
 but rather of some nameless author living under Edward III or later'. This 
 chronicle was first published in Twysden's Decem Scriptores in 1652 as ' Chronicon 
 Johannis Brompton Abbatis Jorvalensis '. Milton no doubt used the edition of 
 Simeon of Durham included in the same collection. He often refers to that 
 author in the two latter books of the History and towards the end of Book IV. 
 
 1 History of Britain, ed. 1670, pp. 1-3. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 5 
 
 411 pages and 41 pages respectively on those two divisions of his 
 subject. 1 Milton, on the other hand, contrives to cover the legendary 
 period in 30 pages, and to complete his whole story in 308 pages, 
 and these are quarto pages containing not much more than three 
 hundred words, while the pages of Holinshed and Speed are folios 
 printed in double columns. One page of Holinshed contains as many 
 words as four pages of Milton, and in lightness of touch, as well 
 as brevity, Milton as a story-teller exceeds either Holinshed, Speed, 
 or Stow. 
 
 The legends which formed the staple of early British history had 
 already been told and retold by many Elizabethan and Jacobean 
 poets. Spenser in the second book of the Faerie Queene had versified 
 in some six hundred lines the story of the landing of Brutus and the 
 fortunes of his descendants up to Uther Pendragon. 2 Milton quotes 
 a stanza from his version. 3 Drayton interspersed the thirty ' Songs ' 
 of his Polyolbion, wherever a legend could be localized, with narra- 
 tives of British or Saxon monarchs which hill tells to hill and river 
 certifies to river. In the first song of all the Dart claims the royalty 
 of all the streams in the West because Brutus landed at her mouth, 
 ' which now the envious world doth slander as a dream.' 4 It is to 
 Drayton and Spenser that Milton alludes when he recites his story 
 of the wrestling match between Corineus and the giant Goemagog, 
 terming it ' a grand fable though dignified by our best poets \ 5 
 
 Minor poets, too, had sought the same inexhaustible storehouse. 
 Higgins, in his additions to The Mirror for Magistrates (1574), 
 Warner in Albion's England (1586), Hey wood in Troja Britannica 
 (1609), and Slatyer in Palaeo- Albion (1621), all had found material 
 for their art in the mythical history of Britain. Nor had the 
 dramatists, from the author of Gorboduc to the author of Lear and 
 Cymbeline, been behindhand in employing plots from the same source 
 in tragedies or chronicle plays. Whether Milton believed these 
 stories or not, their familiarity and their attractiveness made it 
 impossible for him to pass them over in silence. 
 
 1 The computation is based on the edition of Holinshed of 1586, and the 1632 
 edition of Speed. Milton, as his Common-place Book shows, used this edition 
 of Holinshed and the 1631 edition of Stow. 
 
 2 Book II, canto x. 
 
 3 Ibid., x, 1. 212 ; History of Britain, p. 16. 
 
 4 Polyolbion, ed. 1613, p. 8. Drayton is a convinced believer in the Brutus 
 legend. Selden, in the notes, argues for it ' as an advocate for the Muse ', but not 
 ' if alleged for my own opinion \ See pp. 17, 93, 162, and the address ( from 
 the author of the Illustrations ' prefixed. 
 
 5 History of Britain) p. 13; Faerie Queenr, II. x. 92; Polyolbion, p. 12. 
 
6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 Moreover, they had a great attraction for Milton himself, even if 
 his judgement rejected them as fictitious. In Comus he had already 
 utilized the story of Sabrina, the 'virgin daughter of Locrine', who 
 gave her name to the Severn, and he now told it once more in 
 prose. 1 The space devoted in the History of Britain to the story 
 of Lear and Cordelia is probably a tribute to Shakespeare, but the 
 two pages devoted to kings Brennus and Belinus must be explained 
 by the fact that they were to have been personages in the intended 
 epic. 2 
 
 It is not only by his treatment of the mythical period of English 
 history that Milton's interest in the legendary and anecdotic side of 
 history is revealed. It appears in the later books as well as the 
 earlier, and the introduction of certain episodes or the space devoted 
 to them may often be explained by their inclusion in the list of 
 suggested subjects for his 'British Tragedies'. The story of Queen 
 Eadburga, the vision of King Edwin, Athelstan's murder of his 
 brother and his repentance, are cases in point. 3 But the most 
 remarkable instance is the narrative of King Edgar's marriage with 
 Elfrida, and of another love adventure of that king's which Milton 
 himself styles ' fitter for a novel than a history '. 4 ' Edgar slaying 
 Ethel wold for false play in wooing ' had once seemed a good plot for 
 a tragedy. ' Wherein,' noted Milton, ' may be set out his pride and 
 lust, which he thought to cloak by favouring monks and building 
 monasteries ; also the disposition of woman in Elfrida towards her 
 husband.' 5 
 
 Another episode treated at somewhat disproportionate length is 
 that of the murder of Aelfred, the second son of Ethelred the 
 Unready, which some authorities attributed to the treachery of 
 Earl Godwin. The explanation of the space given to the story, 
 and of the elaboration with which the statements of conflicting 
 authors about it are set forth, appears to be that Milton once 
 intended to make it the starting-point of a classical tragedy. The 
 first scene of the tragedy of Harold, he had noted, ' may begin with 
 the ghost of Alfred . . . slain in cruel manner by Godwin, Harold's 
 father, his mother and brother dissuading him.' 6 
 
 Here and elsewhere throughout the History of Britain the 
 influence of Holinshed's Chronicle is plainly perceptible. Alike in 
 the anecdotes inserted and the anecdotes omitted, Milton usually 
 
 1 Comus, 11. 824-937 ; History of Britain, p. 15. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 17, 22. 3 Ibid., pp. 184, 224, 289. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 239. 5 Masson, Life of Milton, ii. 114. 
 
 6 Ibid., p. 114 ; History of Britain, p. 274. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 7 
 
 follows in the track of Holinshed (or rather of Abraham Fleming, 
 who wrote that part of HolinshecTs compilation). For instance, 
 under the reign of Edward the Confessor Milton relates the stories 
 of the divine judgement upon Godwin, the soldierly death of Si ward, 
 and the prophetic vision of Edward the Confessor; 1 all these are 
 to be found in Holinshed, but none of them in Speed or Stow. 
 Similarly, Milton omits the story of Alfred and the cakes, which 
 is omitted by Holinshed though it is told both by Stow and Speed. 
 In the first book of the History of Britain the author's obliga- 
 tions to Holinshed are still more evident, nor is it by a mere 
 coincidence that the first sentence of one is an echo of the second 
 sentence in the other. ' The beginning of nations, those excepted 
 of whom sacred books have spoken, is to this day unknown, 1 writes 
 Milton. 'The original in manner of all nations is doubtful,' wrote 
 the chronicler, ' and even the same for the most part fabulous, that 
 always excepted, which we find in the Holy Scriptures. 1 2 
 
 On the other hand, Milton's was too vigorous and too independent 
 a mind to adopt implicitly the conclusions of any previous writer. 
 He had read Stow and Speed as well as Holinshed, and seems from 
 his notes to have compared their narratives. At a later stage he 
 read what original authorities he could obtain for the period from 
 the coming of the Romans to the Norman Conquest, and tested the 
 statements of the chroniclers by their aid. Many statements and 
 theories which the chroniclers had accepted he dismissed as un- 
 founded or improbable when he came to write. 
 
 Holinshed (or rather Abraham Fleming) begins the history of 
 Britain, about the time of the flood, with the rule of Samothes, the 
 sixth son of Japhet, and his sons, and the subjugation of the island 
 about three hundred years later by the giant Albion, the son of 
 Neptune. Milton, with Stow and Speed, rejects this story, calling 
 it 'an outlandish figment', and condemning 'those of our own 
 writers who thought they had done nothing unless with all cir- 
 cumstance they tell us when and who first set foot upon this 
 island. 1 3 
 
 Holinshed and Stow both accept with implicit faith the Brutus 
 legend. The latter intercalates in his narrative ' A briefe Proofe of 
 Brute 1 , showing how many learned men affirm this history, and 
 denounces Polydore Vergil for denying it. This man, he complains, 
 ' with one dash of a pen cashiereth three score princes with all their 
 
 1 History of Britain, pp. 290, 291, 298. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 1. Holinshed, ed. 1587; Bk. I, p. 1. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 4. 
 
8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 histories and historians ; yea, and some ancient laws also.' l On the 
 other hand, Speed states, with convincing clearness and great 
 elaboration, the arguments against the legend. 'As France,' he 
 concludes, 'hath cast off their Francio king Priamus his son, 
 Scotland their Scotia king Pharoes' daughter, Denmark their Danus, 
 Ireland their Hiberus, and other countries their demigods, so let 
 Britaines likewise with them disclaim their Brute.' 2 
 
 Milton endeavours to hold the balance between absolute credulity 
 and complete rejection. He will not follow Speed the whole way : 
 
 * Of Brutus and his line with the whole progeny of kings, to the 
 entrance of Julius Caesar, we cannot so easily be discharged ; 
 descents of ancestry, long continued, laws and exploits not seeming 
 to be borrowed or devised, which on the common belief have wrought 
 no small impression ; defended by many, denied utterly by few. 
 For what though Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded 
 up ... yet those old and inborn names of successive kings, never 
 any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some 
 
 ! part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought 
 
 ' without too strict an incredulity. 
 
 'For these, and those causes above mentioned, that which hath 
 received approbation from many, I have chosen not to omit. 
 Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I must 
 follow ; so far as keeps aloof from impossible and absurd, attested 
 by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not, as the due 
 and proper subject of story.' 3 
 
 Another series of legends clustered round the introduction of 
 Christianity into Britain. It was said that Simon Zelotes or 
 Joseph of Arimathaea had preached Christianity in this country 
 during the reign of Nero, and that about the year 177 when Lucius 
 was king of Britain the whole island accepted the faith. A letter 
 of Pope Eleutherius to the king was quoted in support of the facts ; 
 Lucius was canonized as the first British saint, and it became the 
 accepted belief of' English historians that the British nation was the 
 first to make public profession of Christianity. Holinshed, Stow, 
 and even the critical Speed, with some differences as to the details, 
 all accepted these stories. Milton relates them, but he does so with 
 obvious scepticism, and concludes : ' Of these matters, variously 
 written and believed, ecclesiastic historians can best determine : as 
 the best of them do, with little credit given to such uncertain 
 relations.' 4 
 
 1 Stow's Chronicle, ed. 1631, p. 6 and preface. 2 Speed, pp. 14-20. 
 
 3 History of Britain, p. 6. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 80; Holinshed, i. 37, 51 ; Speed, pp. 73-81, 103; Stow, p. 38. 
 Fuller, Church History, ed. 1655, p. 9. Milton was indifferent to this claim, 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 9 
 
 Milton shows the same scepticism about the popular belief that 
 Constantine the Great was of British descent. ' There goes a fame, 1 
 he says, 'and that seconded by most of our own historians, though 
 not those the ancientest, that Constantine was born in this island, his 
 mother Helena the daughter of Coilus, a British prince.' He pro- 
 ceeds to point out a few improbabilities, and to summarize the 
 evidence of the Roman authorities against it. Here again he is 
 more difficult to satisfy than Speed, who accepts the tradition, 
 quoting, in answer to unbelievers, the opinion of 'Time's chief 
 secretary, the learned Camden ' in its favour. 1 
 
 Milton's treatment of the Arthurian legend is a still more interest- 
 ing example of the progress of scepticism. The three chroniclers 
 who were the standard historians of Milton's time all doubted the 
 details of the legend, but believed that Arthur was a real king who 
 gained genuine victories. ' Of this Arthur,' says Holinshed's 
 Chronicle^ ' many things are written beyond credit, for that there is 
 no ancient author of authority that confirmeth the same ; but surely 
 as may be thought he was some worthy man, and by all likelihood a 
 great enemy to the Saxons, by reason whereof the Welshmen, which 
 are the very Britons indeed, have him in famous remembrance.' 
 Then at great length he relates the legendary life and exploits of 
 the hero. 2 
 
 Stow is briefer, but adopts much the same position. * Of this 
 Arthur there be many fabulous reports, but certain he was (saith 
 William of Malmesbury) a prince more worthy to have advancement 
 by true histories than false fables, being the only prop and upholder 
 of his country.' He supports the truth of the story by identifying 
 the sites of Mon Badonicus and the Castle of Camelot, and describing 
 the remains found there. 3 The critical Speed quotes Malmesbury 
 
 holding it a greater glory that Wicliffe, the beginner of the Reformation, 
 was an Englishman : ( England having had this grace and honour from God 
 to be the first that should set up a standard for the recovery of lost truth, and 
 blow the first evangelic trumpet to the nations.' Of Reformation, Prose Works, 
 i. 5. Archbishop Parker firmly believed in the Lucius legend, and also did 
 Cardinal Pole ; Strype's Parker, i. 139, 467 ; iii. 247. 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 89 ; Speed, p. 156 ; Holinshed, pp. 62, 63. Gibbon 
 summarizes the question in a sentence : ( This tradition, unknown to the contem- 
 poraries of Constantine, was invented in the darkness of the monasteries, was 
 embellished by Jeffrey of Monmouth and the writers of the twelfth century, has 
 been defended by our antiquarians of the last age, and is seriously related in the 
 ponderous history of England compiled by Mr. Carte ' (vol. i, p. 147). Decline 
 and Fall, ed. Bury, p. 397. 
 
 2 Holinshed, i. 90-3. 
 
 3 Stow, pp. 53-5. 
 
10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 too, and condemns Geoffrey of Monmouth for discrediting the truth 
 about Arthur by his toys and tales. ' Of his person, 1 he concludes, 
 ' we make no doubt, though his acts have been written with too 
 lavish a pen.' 1 
 
 Milton is much more thoroughgoing. All that happened about 
 that time is doubtful. ' The age whereof we now write hath had the 
 ill hap more than any since the first fabulous times, to be surcharged 
 with all the idle fancies of posterity.' He introduces Arthur by 
 describing him as a British leader, ' more renowned in songs and 
 romances than true stories.' With real insight he dismisses at once 
 the mediaeval fictions and examines the account of Nennius as the 
 only evidence of any real value : 
 
 ' Who Arthur was, and whether ever any such reigned in Britain, 
 hath been doubted heretofore, and may again with good reason. For 
 the monk of Malmesbury and others, whose credit hath swayed most 
 with the learneder sort, we may well perceive to have known no more 
 of this Arthur five hundred years past, nor of his doings, than we now 
 living ; and what they had to say, transcribed out of Nennius, a very 
 trivial writer yet extant, which hath already been related ; or out of 
 a British book, the same which he of Monmouth set forth, utterly 
 unknown to the world, till more than six hundred years after the 
 days of Arthur, of whom (as Sigebert in his chronicle confesses) all 
 other histories were silent, both foreign and domestic, except only 
 that fabulous book. Others of later time have sought to assert him 
 by old legends and cathedral regests. But he who can accept of 
 legends for good story, may quickly swell a volume with trash, and 
 had need be furnished with two only necessaries, leisure and belief; 
 whether it be the writer, or he that shall read.' a 
 
 * As to Arthur,' he continues, * no less is in doubt who was his 
 father,' and then proceeds to demolish Uther Pendragon : ' And as 
 we doubted of his parentage, so may we also of his puissance ; for 
 whether that victory at Badon-hill were his or no is uncertain.' All 
 he will concede is that, ' whether by Arthur won, or whensoever,' that 
 battle fc seems indeed to have given a most undoubted and important 
 blow to the Saxons and to have stopped their proceedings for a good 
 while after.' 3 
 
 When we compare Milton's treatment of this with that of 
 Holinshed, Stow, and Speed, his superiority is evident. Alter the 
 phraseology, and he might have been writing in the nineteenth rather 
 than the seventeenth century. For his conclusions are roughly those 
 
 1 Speed, p. 271. 2 History of Britain, p. 122. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 119,122,124. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 11 
 
 of modern scholars, and his reasoning practically that of a scientific 
 historian. 1 
 
 Here, as in many other places, Milton's History helps to explain his 
 poetry. One of the reasons for the abandonment of the intended 
 epic on the story of Arthur was that his studies had convinced him 
 there was no more truth in it than there was in the story of Brutus. 
 When he referred later to the Arthurian legends he was careful to 
 emphasize their fictitious character. He speaks of 
 
 'What resounds 
 
 In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
 Begirt with British and Armoric knights': 
 or of 
 
 ' Ladies that seemed 
 
 Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since 
 Of faery damsels met in forest wide 
 By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
 Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore.' 2 
 
 It was not in these legends of 'fabled knights' and 'battles 
 feigned ' that he could find the substance of his * heroic song ', 3 nor 
 was it through them that he could convey the ethical teaching which 
 it was the office of the poet to give. 
 
 As we have already pointed out, Milton's History is not entirely 
 a compilation from the standard historians of his day, but is also 
 based upon a considerable study of the original sources accessible 
 when he wrote. He begins by endeavouring to form an opinion of 
 the value of the authorities for each particular period taken 
 collectively, and supplements this by incidental estimates of indi- 
 vidual authors. 
 
 For the legends of the prae-Roman period he says at the outset : 
 ' The principal author is well known to be Geoffrey of Monmouth ; 
 what he was and whence his authority, who in his age or before him 
 have delivered the same matter, and such like general discourses, will 
 better stand in a treatise by themselves.' 4 The treatise was never 
 written, but we can gather Milton's opinion of Geoffrey's credibility 
 from his rejection of his statements, and from disparaging references 
 to his fables and untruths. 5 Authentic history, Milton declares at 
 the close of his first book, begins with the coming of the Romans. 
 
 1 Hodgkin, Political History of England, i. 104-5, 107 ; Ramsay, Foundations 
 of England, i. 124-5, 135. 
 
 a Paradise Lost, i. 579 ; Paradise Regained, ii. 357. 
 
 3 Paradise Lost, ix. 27-40. 
 
 4 History of Britain, p. 6. 
 
 5 Ibid., pp. 24, 28, 47, 54, 79, 84, 103, 144. 
 
12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 ' By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and 
 travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now 
 arrives on the confines where daylight and truth meet us with a clear 
 dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours 
 and shapes. For albeit Caesar, whose authority we are now first to 
 follow, wanted not who taxed him of misrepresenting in his Com- 
 mentaries, yea, in his Civil War against Pompey, much more, may 
 we think, in the British affairs, of whose little skill in writing he did 
 not easily hope to be contradicted ; yet now in such variety of good 
 authors, we hardly can miss, from one hand or other, to be sufficiently 
 informed, as of things past so long ago.' 1 
 
 * . . . The only authors we have of British matters while the power of 
 Rome reached hither ' are Roman authors ' who in the Latin tongue 
 have laid together as much and perhaps more than was required to a 
 history of Britain.' The story they tell is ' a story of much truth ', 
 and for the first hundred years and more it may be ' collected without 
 much labour '. For the most part ' little seems to be required above 
 transcription ', although something may be added by diligence and 
 explained by the arrangement of the facts. Towards the end of the 
 period, however, ' the Roman empire declining apace, good historians 
 growing scarce or lost, have left us little but fragments for many 
 years ensuing.' 2 
 
 When the Roman empire fell, darkness settled down again ; learn- 
 ing and history, and even language itself, decayed with it : 
 
 ' Henceforth we are to steer by another sort of authors ; near 
 enough to the things they write, as in their own country, if that 
 would serve ; in time not much belated, some of equal age ; in 
 expression barbarous, and to say how judicious, I suspend awhile : 
 this we must expect ; in civil matters to find them dubious relaters, 
 and still to the best advantage of what they term the Holy Church, 
 meaning indeed themselves : in most other matters of religion, blind, 
 astonished, and struck with superstition as with a planet; in one 
 word, Monks. Yet these guides, where can be had no better, n 1 
 be followed ; in gross, it may be true enough ; in circumstances each 
 man, as his judgement gives him, may reserve his faith, or bestow it.' 3 
 
 One of these monks was Bede, the chief authority, says Milton, for 
 the period from the coming of the Saxons to 731, but even he could 
 not make it intelligible : 
 
 ' Beda surceased to write. Out of whom chiefly has been gathered, 
 since the Saxon's arrival, such as hath been delivered, a scattered 
 story picked out here and there, with some trouble and tedious work, 
 from among his many legends of visions and miracles ; toward the 
 
 of Britain, p. 29. 2 Ibid., pp. 31, 33, 84. 3 Ibid., p. 97. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 13 
 
 latter end so bare of civil matters, as what can be thence collected 
 may seem a calendar rather than a history, taken up for the most 
 part with succession of kings, and a computation of years, yet those 
 hard to be reconciled with the Saxon annals. Their actions we read 
 of were most commonly wars, but for what cause waged, or by what 
 councils carried on, no care was had to let us know ; whereby their 
 strength and violence we understand, of their wisdom, reason, or 
 justice, little or nothing, the rest superstition and monastical affecta- 
 tion ; kings one after another leaving their kingly charge, to run their 
 heads fondly into a monk's cowl ; which leaves us uncertain whether 
 Beda was wanting to his matter, or his matter to him. 1 * 
 
 Yet whatever Bede's defects might be he was a better guide than 
 the authors on whom it was necessary to depend for the following 
 period : 
 
 'From hence to the Danish invasion it will be worse with us, 
 destitute of Beda. Left only to obscure and blockish chronicles ; 
 whom Malmesbury, and Huntingdon (for neither they nor we had 
 better authors of those times), ambitious to adorn the history, make 
 no scruple ofttimes, I doubt, to interline with conjectures and sur- 
 mises of their own ; them rather than imitate, I shall choose to repre- 
 sent the truth naked, though as lean as a plain journal. Yet William 
 of Malmesbury must be acknowledged, both for style and judgement, 
 to be by far the best writer of them all ; but what labour is to be 
 endured turning over volumes of rubbish in the rest, Florence of 
 Worcester, Huntingdon, Simeon of Durham, Hoveden, Matthew of 
 Westminster, and many others of obscurer note, with all their 
 monachisms, is a penance to think. Yet these are our only registers, 
 transcribers one after another for the most part, and sometimes 
 worthy enough of the things they register. This travail, rather than 
 not to know at once what may be known of our ancient story, sifted 
 from fables and impertinences, I voluntarily undergo ; and to save 
 others, if they please, the like unpleasing labour." 2 
 
 At intervals during the later part of his narrative Milton charac- 
 terizes or criticizes particular authors more fully. Malmesbury, though 
 the best, had other defects besides those mentioned. ' He refused not 
 the authority of ballads for want of better ' and inserted stories he 
 confessed * to be sung in old songs not read in warrantable authors \ 3 
 Besides, he was too much biased in favour of monks and kings who 
 loved monks, and against the secular clergy. Henry of Huntingdon 
 was not to be trusted unless he was confirmed by some other authority: 
 'little credit is to be placed in Huntingdon single.' He was too 
 imaginative. ' His manner is to comment upon the Annal text ' 
 (that is, the Saxon Chronicle) and to add fictitious details of the 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 172. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., pp. 224, 229. 
 
14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 events recorded 'describing the manner of those battles and 
 encounters, which they who compare and can judge of books may 
 be confident he never found in any current author whom he had to 
 follow'. 1 
 
 Of the value of the * Saxon Annals ', as Milton terms the Anglo- 
 Saxon Chronicle, he has a very just conception. ' These I take ... to 
 be the chief foundation of our story, the ground and basis upon which 
 the monks in later times gloss and comment at their pleasure.' But 
 to understand them and make out the real significance of the 
 Annals was a very difficult task. Sometimes their record of events 
 was * without coherence of sense or story '. Alfred's wars with the 
 Danes ' are set down so perplexedly by the Saxon annalist, ill gifted 
 with utterance, as with much ado can be understood sometimes what 
 is spoken of whether meant of the Danes or of the Saxons '. For 
 instance, it is impossible to say who won the battle of Merton, ' so 
 darkly do the Saxon Annals deliver their meaning with more than 
 wonted infancy.' Poetical passages, such as the ballads on the battles 
 of Brunanburh and Maldon completely baffled and somewhat enraged 
 Milton. Of the former he says : ' The Saxon annalist, wont to be 
 sober and succinct, whether the same or another writer, now labouring 
 under the weight of his argument, and overcharged, runs on a sudden 
 into such extravagant fancies and metaphors as bear him quite beside 
 the scope of being understood. ... I shall only sum up what of him 
 I can attain in usual language.' 2 
 
 Milton endeavoured to supplement the scantiness of the English 
 sources by the help of foreign historians, but got little satisfac- 
 tion from them. He searched the Rerum Danicarum Historia of 
 J. J. Pontanus for information about the Danish invasion, but found 
 nothing of any value. As to the ninth century ' of all these terrible 
 landings and devastations by the Danes ... or of their leaders whether 
 kings, dukes, or earls, the Danish history of best credit saith nothing ; 
 so little wit or conscience they had to leave any memory of their 
 brutish rather than manly actions '. As to the tenth century : < The 
 Danish history, at least their latest and diligentest historian, as 
 neither from the first landing of the Danes, in the reign of West 
 Saxon Brithric, so now again contributed nothing ; busied more than 
 enough to make out the bare names and successors of their uncertain 
 kings, and their small actions at home ; unless out of him I should 
 transcribe what he takes, and I better may, from our own annals.' 3 
 
 1 History of Britain, pp. 122, 175, 211. 2 Ibid., pp. 203, 211, 212, 225. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 179,192,244, 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 15 
 
 When Milton turned to the Scottish historians for facts about the 
 invasion of the Picts and Scots the result was still more disappoint- 
 ing, for he found nothing but pure fiction. George Buchanan, he 
 complains, in his Rerum Scoticarum Historia, ' departs not much from 
 the fables of his predecessor Boethius' (i. e. Hector Boece) ; ' with no 
 less exactness of particular circumstances he takes upon him to relate 
 all those tumultuary inroads of the Scots and Picts into Britain, as if 
 they had but yesterday happened, their order of battle, manner of 
 fight, number of slain, articles of peace, things whereof Gildas and 
 Beda are utterly silent, authors to whom the Scotch writers have 
 none to cite comparable in antiquity; no more therefore to be 
 believed for bare assertions, however quaintly dressed, than our 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, when he varies most from authentic story. 
 But either the inbred vanity of some, in that respect unworthily 
 called historians, or the fond zeal of praising their nations above 
 truth, hath so far transported them, that where they find nothing 
 faithfully to relate, they fall confidently to invent what they think 
 may either best set off their history, or magnify their country.' It 
 was amusing when 'our neighbour historian' gravely reprehended 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth and others 'for fabling in the deeds of 
 Arthur ; yet what he writes thereof himself as of better credit, shows 
 not whence he had but from those fables which he seems content to 
 believe in part on condition that the Scots and Picts may be thought 
 to have assisted Arthur in all his wars and achievements ; whereof 
 appears as little ground by credible story as of that which he most 
 counts for fabulous V 
 
 Another modern author of whom Milton made constant use was 
 Camden. Whenever the locality of a battle had to be fixed, or the 
 modern name of a place given, it was naturally to Camden's Britannia 
 that he turned. The spot where Caesar landed, the ford by which 
 he crossed the Thames, the site of the camp of Caractacus, the position 
 of the Roman wall, and other topographical facts mentioned were all 
 derived from the same source. These questions of identification did 
 not interest Milton much ; he contented himself with briefly giving 
 the necessary minimum of information on such points without inter- 
 rupting the narrative by discussions. If they could not be identified 
 he preferred to omit them. He did not care, he said, ' to wrinkle the 
 smoothness of history with the rugged names of places unknown 
 better harped at in Camden and other chorographers '. 2 
 
 1 History of Britain, pp. 103, 126, 185. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 36, 45, 56, 77, 78, 83, 160, 178. Milton also refers to Spelman's 
 Concilia, p. 143. 
 
16 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 Milton's method of combining and comparing the statements he 
 found in the various authorities he used deserves notice. At the 
 outset he had declared ' I intend not with controversies and quotations 
 to interrupt the smooth course of history.' J But these words referred, 
 as the context shows and his later practice proves, merely to the 
 legendary period covered in the first book. He declined to waste 
 labour ' in computing or collating years and chronologies ' when he 
 was dealing with the reigns of the progeny of Brutus, because it was 
 absurd 'to be vainly curious about the time and circumstances of 
 things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt \ 2 In the later 
 books where his authorities were more trustworthy and he was dealing 
 with historical events, it was worth while to discuss dates, to point out 
 discrepancies, and to attempt to reconcile statements. The task, he 
 admitted, was laborious, but he did not shrink from it. ' This travail, 
 rather than not to know at once what may be known of our ancient 
 story, sifted from fables and impertinences, I voluntarily undergo ; 
 and to save others, if they please, the like unpleasing labour.' 3 
 
 Milton's favourite method, in the later books, is to place the 
 different stories of his authorities side by side, and conclude by 
 saying which account seems most probable. For instance, in relating 
 the division of England between Canute and Edmund Ironside, he 
 summarizes first Malmesbury's account, then that of Huntingdon, 
 finally that of Matthew of Westminster. As to the accession of 
 Edward the Confessor he gives the versions of Huntingdon, Malmes- 
 bury, and Brompton in succession, prefacing them with the remark, 
 * It may seem a wonder that our historians, if they deserve the name, 
 should in a matter so remarkable and so near their own time so much 
 differ.' He inclines to accept William of Malmesbury's version. In 
 another instance, dealing with Harold's visit to William of Normandy, 
 he sets side by side the statements of five authors, Malmesbury, Ingulf, 
 Eadmer, Simeon of Durham, and Matthew Paris. ' So variously are 
 these things reported' that he finds it impossible to decide. 4 
 
 Incidentally he criticizes with some acuteness Ingulfs story, for, like 
 seventeenth-century historians in general, he accepted his Chronicle 
 of Croyland as a genuine authority. Ingulf had said that Edward 
 the Confessor sent Robert Archbishop of Canterbury to acquaint 
 Duke William with his intention of bequeathing the English crown 
 to him. ' The former part may be true that King Edward upon such 
 considerations had sent one or other, but Archbishop Robert was fled 
 the land, and dead many years before.' 6 In the same way Milton 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 3. 2 Ibid., p. 29. 3 Ibid., p. 173. 
 
 4 Ibid., pp. 265, 278, 295. 5 Ibid., p. 296. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 17 
 
 rejects a statement of Simeon of Durham's which describes Uthred, 
 son of the Earl of Northumberland, as fighting against Malcolm of 
 Scotland: 'Here Simeon the relater seems to have committed some 
 mistake, having slain Uthred by Canute two years before and set 
 Eric in his place : Eric therefore it needs must be, not Uthred, who 
 managed this war against the Scots V 
 
 Milton's wide reading showed him that some of $he statements he 
 found in his authorities were merely conventional imitations of earlier 
 historians. Speaking of the omens which accompanied William's 
 landing on the English shore, he says, 'These things are related of 
 Alexander and Caesar, and I doubt thence borrowed by the monks to 
 inlay their story.' 2 At other times his good sense prevented him 
 from believing implicitly what others had been content to accept on 
 authority. Holinshed and Speed, for instance, repeat as a fact Malmes- 
 bury's statement that the English in Edgar's time owed their vices to 
 ' the too much resort of strangers ' to the country, learning rudeness of 
 ' the outlandish Saxons ', daintiness of the Flemings, and drunkenness 
 of the Danes. 'I doubt,' comments Milton, 'these vices are as 
 naturally home-bred here as in any of those countries.' 3 
 
 Yet Milton, to use his own phrase, was not 'of too strict an 
 incredulity', and tells us a few lines further, on the authority of 
 Ingulf, 'This year died Swarling, a monk of Croyland, in the 
 hundred and forty- second year of his age, and another soon after 
 him in the hundred and fifteenth; in that fenny and waterish air 
 the more remarkable.' 4 
 
 To conclude this discussion of Milton's treatment of his authorities 
 and his relation to previous historians; 
 
 It seems plain that Professor Masson went too far when he 
 described the History of -Britain as 'not a work of real research 
 or criticism', but 'a mere popular compilation of such matter as 
 was easily at hand '. 5 Milton aimed higher and achieved more than 
 this verdict admits. There is some attempt both at research and at 
 criticism in the book. Milton frequently shows a very true concep- 
 tion of the value of the evidence at his disposal, as well as the 
 independence of judgement one naturally expects from him. 
 
 The style also possesses the individuality which marks all Milton's 
 writings. The earlier books are more carefully finished than the 
 later ones. In books four and six Milton seems somewhat weary 
 of his task ; he is less attentive to the arrangement of his matter 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 269. 2 Ibid., p. 303. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 235. Ibid., p. 235. 
 
 8 Life of Milton, vi. 644. 
 
 H2 
 
18 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 or the effective statement of what he has to say. In the early part 
 of the History he relates a story or describes a scene with a certain 
 deliberate care not only with touches that reveal the poet, but 
 in the more highly-wrought passages with a certain sententious 
 brevity entirely unlike the fervid and unrestrained diction of his 
 first prose pamphlets. The explanation of this change of style is 
 to be found in Milton's theory of the manner in which history should 
 be written. 
 
 His views on the nature of historical writing in general are set 
 forth in two passages in the History. 
 
 Every age, Milton hints, obtained the historians it deserved, for 
 there was a close relation between the deeds and the written records 
 of the deeds. In certain times, what happened was hardly worth 
 recording. ' Ofttime we see that wise men, and of best ability, have 
 forborn to write the acts of their own days, while they beheld with 
 a just loathing and disdain, not only how unworthy, how perverse, 
 how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all 
 history, the persons and their actions were ; who, either by fortune 
 or some rude election, had attained, as a sore judgement and ignominy 
 upon the land, to have chief sway in managing the commonwealth.' * 
 Even then there were historians of a sort. ' It is true that in 
 obscurest times, by shallow and unskilful writers, the indistinct 
 noise of many battles and devastations of many kingdoms, overrun 
 and lost, hath come to our ears.' But in such periods of decay true 
 history was hardly possible ; and good historians were discouraged. 
 'When the esteem of science and liberal study waxes low in the 
 commonwealth, we may presume that also there all civil virtue and 
 worthy action is grown as low to a decline : and then eloquence, 
 as it were consorted in the same destiny, with the decrease and fall 
 of virtue, corrupts also and fades; at least resigns her office of 
 relating to illiterate and frivolous historians, such as the persons 
 themselves both deserve, and are best pleased with; whilst they 
 want either the understanding to choose better or the innocence 
 to dare invite the examining and searching style of an intelligent 
 and faithful writer to the survey of their unsound exploits, better 
 befriended by obscurity than fame.' 2 
 
 On the other hand, ' worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy 
 relaters, as, by a certain fate, great acts and great eloquence have 
 most commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and honouring each 
 other in the same ages.' For great men knew that history was 
 necessary to their greatness. 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 2. 2 Ibid., p. 32, 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 19 
 
 'He whose just and true valour uses the necessity of war and 
 dominion not to destroy, but to prevent destruction, to bring in 
 liberty against tyrants, law and civility among barbarous nations, 
 knowing that when he conquers all things else, he cannot conquer 
 Time or Detraction, wisely conscious of this his want, as well as of 
 his worth not to be forgotten or concealed, honours and hath 
 recourse to the aid of eloquence, his friendliest and best supply; 
 by whose immortal record his noble deeds, which else were transitory, 
 becoming fixed and durable against the force of years and genera- 
 tions, he fails not to continue through all posterity, over Envy, 
 Death and Time also victorious.' l 
 
 As to the manner in which the historian should relate the deeds 
 he undertook to record, Milton set forth his views in two letters to 
 a young foreign scholar, Henry de Brass. 2 v ^ 
 
 The model for all historical writers was Sallust. The man who 
 appreciated Sallust had made no small progress in the art of history. 3 
 'Dicam libere . . . Sallustium cuivis Latino historico me quidem 
 anteferre; quae etiam constans fere Antiquorum sententia fuit. Habet 
 suas laudes tuus Tacitus ; sed eas meo quidem iudicio maximas, quod 
 Sallustium nervis omnibus sit imitatus.' He proceeds then to explain 
 his view of what Sallust meant when he said ' facta dictis exaequanda 
 sunt '. 
 
 ' Ego vero sic existimo ; qui gestas res dignas digne scripserit, cum 
 animo non minus magno rerumque usu praeditum scribere oportet, 
 quam is qui eas gesserit ; ut vel maximas pari animo comprehendere 
 atque metiri possit, et comprehensas sermone puro atque casto gravi- 
 terque narrare: nam ut ornate non admodum laboro; Historicum 
 enim non Oratorem require. . . . Addiderim et illud Sallustianum, 
 qua in re ipse Catonem maxime laudavit, posse multa paucis 
 absolvere ; id quod sine acerrimo iudicio, atque etiam temperantia 
 quadam neminem posse arbritror. Sunt multi in quibus vel sermonis 
 elegantiam vel congestarum rerum copiam non desideres ; qui brevi- 
 tatem cum copia coniunxerit, id est, qui multa paucis absolverit, 
 princeps meo iudicio Latinorum est Sallustius. Has ego virtutes 
 Historico inesse putem oportere, qui facta dictis exaequaturum se 
 speret/ * 
 
 This 'Sallustiana brevitas' as Quintilian terms it, Milton endeavours 
 to imitate, not only in certain highly-wrought passages, but in the 
 pregnant or picturesque phrases interspersed through his narrative. 
 
 1 History of Britain, pp. 31-3. 
 
 2 loannis Miltoni Angli Epistolarum Familiarum Liber Unus, 1674, pp. 53, 58 ; 
 and Prose Works, v. 401, 405. See Masson, Life of Milton, v. 363, 379. The 
 letters are dated July 15 and December 16, 1657. 
 
 3 ' Sciat se baud parum in re Historica profecisse, cui placeat Sallustius.' 
 
 4 Epistolae, pp. 54-5. 
 
20 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 Take, for instance, his summary of the results of the Roman Con- 
 quest. ' Of the Romans we have cause not to say much worse, than 
 that they beat us into some civility'. 1 Or his comment on the 
 attempt of Ethelred to buy off the Danes. 'The king and his 
 courtiers . . . send now the fourth time to buy a dishonourable 
 peace, every time still dearer (for the Danes knew how to milk 
 such easy kine).' Or his description of the incursions of the Danes 
 ' sallying forth out of their ships as out of savage dens ' to plunder, 
 and then ' like wild beasts glutted returned to their caves '. To vary 
 the phrase in a second case he says ' or rather sea monsters to their 
 water-stables'. 2 
 
 The same quality marks some of Milton's characters of persons. 
 He describes Carausius as usurping the government because he ' was 
 grown at length too great a delinquent to be less than an emperor', 
 and Vortigern as a tyrant who was * yet of the people much beloved, 
 because his vices sorted so well with theirs '. 3 At times this attempt 
 to put much meaning into few words produces obscurity. At other 
 times it results in something like conceits ; as when he describes the 
 Britons 'with a stern compassion' slaying their wives and children 
 to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Romans, or 
 a Dane ' with a pious impiety ' killing Archbishop Alfage in order 
 to put an end to his sufferings. 4 
 
 In one passage of his letters to Henry de Brass Milton lays down 
 another principle which should be observed in historical writing. 
 * Crebras etiam sententias, et iudicia de rebus gestis interiecta prolixe 
 nollem, ne, interrupta rerum serie, quod Politici Scriptoris munus 
 est Historicus invadat; qui si in consiliis explicandis factisque 
 enarrandis, non suum ingenium aut coniecturam, sed veritatem 
 potissimum sequitur, suarum profecto partium satagit^ But he is 
 far from following this counsel himself. It is true he does not insert 
 many general reflections, but there are a few. On the Britons 
 calling the Saxons to help them against the Picts and Scots he 
 observes: 'So much do men through impatience count ever that 
 the heaviest which they bear at present, and to remove the evil 
 which they suffer, care not to pull on a greater ; as if variety and 
 change in evil also were acceptable '. 5 When he relates the repent- 
 ance of Canute and his resolve to make amends to his people, he 
 adds : ' It is a fond conceit in many great ones, and pernicious in the 
 end, to cease from no violence till they have attained the end of 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 49. 2 Ibid., pp. 252, 255. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 86, 109. * ibid., pp. 76, 256. 
 
 5 Ibid., p. 110. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 21 
 
 their ambitions and desires ; then to think God appeased by seeking 
 to bribe him with a share, however large, of their illgotten spoils ; 
 and then, lastly, to grow zealous of doing right, when they have no 
 longer need to do wrong.' l 
 
 But generally Milton's comments are not so much to the point : 
 on the contrary, they are as far away from it as possible. He inserts 
 reflections of every kind. Some are references to contemporary 
 manners. When he describes the ancient Britons as ' painting their 
 own skins with several portraitures of beast, bird, or flower', he adds, 
 ' a vanity which hath not yet left us, removed only from the skin to 
 the skirt, behung now with as many coloured ribbands and gewgaws '. 2 
 Others contain references to contemporary politics. Having to men- 
 tion the expedition sent by a Northumbrian king to Ireland, he 
 introduces an allusion to the Irish massacres in 1641 : ' A harmless 
 nation, saith Beda, and ever friendly to the English ; in both which 
 they seem to have left a posterity much unlike them at this day.' 3 
 Milton's comments continually remind us that he held very strong 
 views about the subjection of women. He is as bitter against 'the 
 monstrous regiment of women' as John Knox himself. Cordelia's 
 nephews rebel against her in spite of her virtues, not bearing that 
 a kingdom should be governed by a woman,' and Cartismandua is 
 dethroned by the Britons, not because of her crimes, but on account 
 of ' the uncomeliness of their subjection to the monarchy of a woman '. 4 
 When he relates, after Holinshed, the legend of Martia, wife of 
 King Guitheline, who is said ' to have excelled so much in wisdom 
 as to venture upon a new institution of laws', the story seems so 
 monstrous that he has to rationalize it away. * In the minority 
 of her son she had the rule ; and then, as may be supposed, brought 
 forth those laws, not herself, for laws are masculine births, but by 
 the advice of her sagest counsellors ; and therein she might do 
 virtuously, since it befel her to supply the nonage of her son, else 
 nothing more awry from the law of God and nature than that a 
 woman should give laws to men.' 5 
 
 Perhaps the most curious example of Milton's prejudice against 
 women is that afforded by his treatment of Boadicea. Previous 
 historians had regarded the warrior-queen as a national heroine ; he 
 represents her merely as a virago, ' a distracted woman with as mad 
 a crew at her heels.' Dion Cassius puts a long speech into Boadicea's 
 mouth, which Holinshed and Speed reproduce at length. Milton 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 272. ' 2 Ibid. , p. 48. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 167 ; cf. p. 82. * Ibid., pp. 22, 60. 
 
 5 Ibid., p. 25. 
 
22 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 very properly rejects this oration. ' I affect not set speeches in 
 a history, unless known for certain to have been so spoken in effect 
 as they are written, nor then, unless worth rehearsal ; and to invent 
 such, though eloquently, as some historians have done, is an abuse of 
 posterity, raising in them that read other conceptions of those times 
 and persons than were true. Much less, therefore, do I purpose here 
 or elsewhere to copy out tedious orations without decorum, though in 
 their authors composed ready to my hand.' 1 The unseemliness of the 
 oration consists in this, that Dion and also Tacitus put into the mouth 
 of Boadicea, besides ' a deal of other fondness ', the statement that 
 ' with the Britons it was usual for a woman to be their leader '. 
 Indignantly Milton observes : ' This they do out of vanity, hoping 
 to embellish and set out their history with the strangeness of our 
 manners, not caring in the meanwhile to brand us with the rankest 
 note of barbarism, as if in Britain women were men and men 
 women. 1 * 2 
 
 Milton's prejudices appear still more strongly and frequently in 
 his references to Church matters. Of set purpose he avoided the 
 ecclesiastical side of British and Saxon history as far as possible, 
 4 not professing to relate of those matters more than what mixes 
 aptly with civil affairs.' 3 The records of political events were often 
 an arid catalogue of names and dates, tragical deaths of princes of 
 whom nothing else was known, and battles without reason or result. 
 ' Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers,' com- 
 plains Milton, 'what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars 
 of kites, or crows flocking and fighting in the air ? ' 4 
 
 But he deliberately refused to amplify these meagre annals by 
 drawing upon the fund of information which his authorities supplied 
 about the religious life of the times. ' I am sensible how wearisome 
 it may likely be to read of so many and bare and reasonless actions, 
 so many names of kings one after another acting little more than 
 mute persons in a scene. What would it be to have inserted the long 
 bead-roll of archbishops, bishops, abbots, abbesses, and their doings, 
 neither to religion profitable, nor to morality, swelling my authors 
 
 1 History of Britain, pp. 65-67. 2 Ibid., p. 66. 3 Ibid., p. 138. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 184. Hume quotes this : ' The history of that period abounds in 
 names, but is extremely barren of events ; or the events related so much without 
 circumstances and causes that the most profound or most eloquent writer must 
 despair of rendering them either instructive or entertaining to the reader. 
 Even the great learning and vigorous imagination of Milton sunk under the 
 weight, and this author scruples not to declare that the skirmishes of the kites 
 or crows as much merited a particular narrative as the confused transactions and 
 battles of the Saxon Heptarchy.' History of England, i. 25. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 23 
 
 each to a voluminous body, by me studiously omitted, and left as 
 their propriety, who have a mind to write the ecclesiastical matters 
 of those ages? 11 The development of a scientific interest in the 
 monuments and institutions of the past was one of the characteristics 
 of seventeenth-century England, but so far as it showed itself in 
 researches into ecclesiastical antiquities Milton took no interest in 
 the movement. He scoffed at men like Dodsworth and Dugdale, 
 'who take pleasure to be all their lifetime raking the foundations 
 of old abbeys and cathedrals.' 2 Though he professed to distinguish 
 between antiquaries, 'whose labours are useful and laudable,' and 
 ' antiquitarians ', that is, ' those that over affect antiquity ', and 
 consequently oppose necessary changes in the Church, he evidently 
 thought that all antiquaries tended to become antiquitarians. In 
 his pamphlet Of Reformation in England he sneers at Camden as 
 *a fast friend of episcopacy, who cannot but love bishops as well as 
 old coins and his much lamented monasteries for antiquity's sake '. 3 
 
 Just as Milton failed to appreciate the value of researches into 
 monastic antiquities, so he was insensible to the charm of the 
 monastic legends. He had not hesitated for the sake of the poets 
 to relate Geoffrey of Monmouth's fantastic fictions about the early 
 British kings, but fabulous stories about events which occurred in 
 historic times stood on a different footing. A vision might pass, but 
 no story with a miracle in it should be told in his pages. Legends 
 of martyrs were therefore excluded. Speaking of Alban of Verulam, 
 he says that the story of his martyrdom ' soiled and worse martyred 
 with the fabling zeal of some idle fancies, more fond of miracles than 
 apprehensive of truth, deserves not longer digression \ 4 The secret 
 murder of Kenelm of Mercia was miraculously revealed, ' but to tell 
 how,' says Milton, ' is a long story, though told out of order by 
 Malmesbury, and under the year 821 by Matthew of Westminster, 
 where I leave it to be sought by such as are more credulous than 
 I wish my readers.' 5 
 
 In Milton's attitude scientific incredulity was reinforced by Puri- 
 tanical abhorrence of popery, and by contempt for the triviality of 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 177. Hume echoes this passage : ' It is almost impos- 
 sible, and quite needless, to be more particular in relating the transactions of the 
 East Angles. What instruction or entertainment can it give the reader to hear 
 a long bead-roll of barbarous names, Egric, Annas, Ethelbert, Ethelwald, Aldulf, 
 Elfwald, Beorne, Ethelred, Ethelbert, who successively murdered, expelled, or 
 inherited from each other, and obscurely filled the throne of that kingdom?' 
 i. 40. 2 Ibid., p. 173. 
 
 8 Of Reformation in England, Prose Works, i. 14. 
 
 4 History of IMta'ni, p. 88. 5 Ibid. 
 
24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 ecclesiastical controversy, wherein he anticipates the philosophical 
 historians of the next century. After Augustine had commenced 
 the work of converting the men of Kent, Pope Gregory sent him 
 a supply of fellow labourers. ' What they were,' says Milton, ' may 
 be guessed by the stuff which they brought with them, vessels and 
 vestments for the altar, copes, relics, and for the Archbishop Austin 
 a pall to say mass in ; to such a rank superstition that age was grown, 
 though some of them yet retaining an emulation of apostolic zeal. 1 1 
 He is still more contemptuous when, having mentioned the Synod of 
 Whitby, he has to refer to the controversy between the Irish and 
 English clergy about the tonsure. 'Another clerical question was 
 there also much controverted, not so superstitious in my opinion 
 as ridiculous, about the right shaving of crowns.' 2 Of monastic 
 institutions he speaks always with similar contempt, dwelling at 
 length on their worst side and on their decay, never mentioning their 
 services in their prime. ' In the days of Ina,' he relates, ' clerks and 
 laics, men and women hasting to Rome in herds, thought themselves 
 nowhere sure of eternal life till they were cloistered there.' Kings 
 imitated their subjects : if one was ' forcibly shaven a monk ', many 
 others of their own free will 'got into a monk's hood'. Kelwulf of 
 Northumberland became a monk in Lindisfarne, * yet none of the 
 severest,' says Milton, ' for he brought those monks from milk and 
 water to wine and ale ; in which doctrine no doubt but they were 
 soon docile, and well might, for Kelwulf brought with him good 
 provision, great treasure and revenues of land, recited by Simeon, yet 
 all under pretence of following (I use the author's words) poor Christ, 
 by voluntary poverty : no marvel then if such applause were given by 
 monkish writers to kings turning monks, and much cunning perhaps 
 used to allure them.' 3 The fruit of this predilection for monkish life 
 was the ruin of Church and State. When at the beginning of the 
 ninth century the Danish storm broke in England, the Saxons were 
 ripe for conquest. They were ' broken with luxury and sloth, either 
 secular or superstitious ; for laying aside the exercise of arms, and 
 the study of all virtuous knowledge, some betook themselves to over- 
 worldly or vicious practice, others to religious idleness and solitude, 
 which brought forth nothing but vain and delusive visions; easily 
 perceived such by their commanding of things, either not belonging 
 to the gospel, or utterly forbidden, ceremonies, relics, monasteries, 
 masses, idols ; add to these ostentation of alms, got ofttimes by 
 rapine and oppression, or intermixed with violent and lustful deeds, 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 141. 2 Ibid., p. 162. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 172, 173, 176, 180. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 25 
 
 sometimes prodigally bestowed as the expiation of cruelty and blood- 
 shed '. Thus religion itself had grown void of sincerity, and the 
 greatest shows of purity had become impure. 1 
 
 There is one omission in Milton's references to ecclesiastical affairs 
 which at first surprises the reader. He does not attack episcopacy. 
 In 1641 he had thought nothing too bad to say of the bishops. 
 ' Most certain it is (as all our stories bear witness) that ever since 
 their coming to the see of Canterbury, for nearly twelve hundred 
 years, to speak of them in general, they have been in England to our 
 souls a sad and doleful succession of illiterate and blind guides ; to 
 our purses and goods a wasteful kind of robbers, a perpetual havoc 
 and rapine ; to our state a continual hydra of mischief and molesta- 
 tion, the forge of discord and rebellion.' 2 In the History, however, 
 Milton is almost completely silent about the bishops. Incidentally 
 he remarks how quickly Augustine and his successors 'stepped up 
 into fellowship of pomp with kings '. On the other hand, he inserts 
 an unexpectedly favourable character of Dunstan : ' a strenuous 
 bishop, zealous without dread of persons, and for aught appears, 
 the best of many ages, if he busied not himself too much in secular 
 affairs.' 3 
 
 Perhaps this absence of attacks on bishops is to be explained 
 by the fact that they were suppressed by the licenser. Toland says : 
 ' The Licensers, those sworn officers to destroy learning, liberty, and 
 good sense, expunged several passages of it, wherein he exposed the 
 superstitious pride and cunning of the popish monks in the Saxon 
 times, but applied by the sagacious Licensers to Charles the Second's 
 bishops.' 4 But the number of attacks upon 'the popish monks 1 
 which remain seem to refute the story that such indirect thrusts 
 at Milton's old enemies were struck out. Some remarks against the 
 bishops perhaps disappeared owing to the censorship, but there is 
 a better explanation of their absence. Bishops had been abolished 
 before Milton began to write his History. Since 1646 'new pres- 
 byter' not 'old priest' had been Milton's mark. 5 In the History 
 he used the primitive bishops as a stalking-horse against the 
 Presbyterians. Relating the story that three British bishops who 
 attended the Synod of Rimini in 354 accepted the emperor's offer 
 to pay their expenses rather than the subsidies offered by the 
 brethren, ' esteeming it more honourable to live on the public than 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 190. 2 Of Reformation, Prose Works, i. 60. 
 
 3 History of Britain, pp. 141, 245. 
 
 4 Toland, Life of John Milton, 1699, p. 138. 
 
 5 Sonnet ' On the New Forces of Conscience under the Long Parliament'. 
 
26 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 to be obnoxious to any private purse,' he adds the comment : 
 ' doubtless an ingenuous mind, and far above the presbyters of our age ; 
 who like well to sit in assembly on the public stipend, but liked not 
 the poverty that caused these to do so.' * Under cover of describing 
 after Gildas the vices of the British clergy in the sixth century, he 
 inserts phrases aimed at modern ministers. 4 Pastors in name but 
 in deed wolves,' * seizing on the ministry as a trade, not as a spiritual 
 charge,' ' intent not to feed the flock but to pamper and well line 
 themselves,' who ' keep in awe the superstitious multitude ' with 
 ' niceties and trivial points ' but ' in true saving knowledge leave 
 them still as gross and stupid as themselves '. 2 Lest there should be 
 any mistake made by his readers, Milton placed at the beginning of 
 Book III a comparison between the state of Britain when the Romans 
 left it and that of England in 1647 and 1648, containing a direct 
 denunciation of the self-seeking of the divines of the Westminster 
 Assembly and their demand for compulsion in matters of conscience. 3 
 This great digression shows how impossible it was for Milton 
 to avoid referring to the problems of the present when he was 
 writing about the events of the past. To utter freely what he 
 felt about 'so dear a concernment' as his country's weal was a 
 j necessity of his nature. Just as Carlyle was obliged to suspend 
 his study of Cromwell in order to express in Past and Present his 
 feelings about the condition of England in 1843, so Milton inter- 
 I rupted his History of Britain in order to say what he thought about 
 ' the condition of England in 1648. As the Civil War drew towards 
 its close, the result of 'all this waste of wealth and loss of blood' 
 became doubtful. In the two years of confusion which followed, 
 no stable settlement was attained, and it seemed as if none was 
 attainable. The king had been practically set aside, but the Par- 
 liament seemed unable to govern. To Milton, England appeared 
 to be in the position of Britain when the Roman rule ended. When 
 the Romans left the country, the Britons ' thus relinquished, and by 
 all right the government relapsing into their own hands, thenceforth 
 betook themselves to live after their own laws.' But they failed to 
 erect a stable government. 'They seemed awhile^to bestir themselves 
 with a show of diligence in their new affairs, some secretly aspiring 
 to rule, others adoring the name of liberty, yet so soon as they felt 
 by proof the weight of what it was to govern well themselves, and 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 90. He refers to this again in The Likeliest Means to 
 remove Hirelings out of the Church, Prone Works, iii. 376. 
 
 2 History of Britain, y. 129. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 100 ; Prose Works, ed. Mitford, iii. 94-101. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 27 
 
 what was wanting in them, not stomach or the love of licence, but 
 the wisdom, the virtue, the labour to use and maintain true liberty, 
 they soon remitted their heat, and shrunk more wretchedly under 
 the burden of their own liberty than before under a foreign yoke.' 1 
 England now was in a similar condition. Fortune seemed ' to have 
 put liberty so long desired like a bride into their hands '. The faults 
 of the Britons ' brought those ancient natives to misery and ruin by 
 liberty, which rightly used might have made them happy 1 , as the 
 faults of the English had brought them now, 'after many labours, 
 much bloodshed and vast expense, to ridiculous frustration.' 2 
 
 What were the causes of this failure ? When the Long Parliament 
 met the people chose to represent them ' such as they thought best 
 affected to the public good 1 . Some were men of wisdom and 
 integrity, but the greater part merely of men of wealth or ambition. 
 These last, ' when their superficial zeal was spent, 1 betook themselves 
 every one to follow his own ends. Justice was delayed and denied ; 
 spite and favour determined all; everywhere there was wrong and 
 oppression. The members shared offices, gifts, and preferments 
 amongst themselves ; instead of enacting good laws they did nothing 
 but impose new taxes ; instead of paying the just debts of the State 
 they cheated its creditors. 3 Fearful of being called to account, they 
 fomented fresh troubles and invented new business in order to avoid 
 the necessity of laying down their authority. 
 
 Religion was in as bad a plight as the State. The Westminster 
 Assembly had been selected to reform the Church. Its members, 
 after crying down pluralists and non-residents, had become pluralists 
 and non-residents themselves. They called as loudly for compulsion 
 in matters of religion against others as they had complained of it 
 when exercised against themselves, and strove to set up a spiritual 
 tyranny by the aid of the secular power. Seeing the incapacity 
 of their statesmen, the people became disaffected, and seeing the 
 hypocrisy of their ministers, they ceased to believe in religion. 
 
 'Thus, 1 continues Milton, 'they who of late were extolled as our 
 greatest deliverers, and had the people wholly at their devotion, by 
 so discharging their trust as we see, did not only weaken and unfit 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 100. Milton elsewhere refers to this period to prove 
 that British kings were elected by the people, and could be deposed by them. 
 See p. 107, and Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Prose Works, ii. 472. 
 
 2 The ridiculousness of failure to maintain freedom after such efforts to 
 gain it is in 1660 the keynote of Milton's Ready and Easy Way to Establish 
 a Free Commonwealth, when the position resembled that in 1648. Prose Works, 
 iii. 425. 
 
 3 Compare Milton's Sonnet to Fairfax, written in August 1648. 
 
28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 themselves to be dispensers of what liberty they pretended, but 
 unfitted also the people, now grown worse and more disordinate, 
 to receive or digest any liberty at all. For stories teach us, that 
 liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought 
 Rome itself into a farther slavery : for liberty hath a sharp and double 
 edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men ; to bad and 
 dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands : neither 
 is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to 
 know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove 
 it wisely ; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them 
 substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they 
 merit, and the bad the curb which they need. But to do this, and 
 to know these exquisite proportions, the heroic wisdom which is 
 required surmounted far the principles of these narrow politicians : 
 what wonder then if they sunk as these unfortunate Britons before 
 them, entangled and oppressed with things too hard and generous 
 above their strain and temper ? ' l 
 
 Then, having stated the causes of this failure, Milton explained the 
 cure. Englishmen, 'to speak a truth not often spoken, 1 were not 
 born statesmen. England was a land ' fruitful enough of men stout 
 and courageous in war', but at the same time 'not over-fertile 
 naturally of men able to govern wisely and prudently in peace'. 
 The national character was in fault : it was rude, intractable and 
 unteachable he almost says unintelligent. Public spirit and similar 
 qualities ' grow not here but in minds well implanted with solid and 
 elaborate breeding \ Just as certain products must be imported to 
 our island from sunnier lands, ' so must ripe understanding and many 
 civil virtues be imported into our minds from foreign writings and 
 examples of best ages.' If England was to succeed in great enter- 
 prises she must have men with the education of statesmen to 
 conduct her affairs not politicians 'trusting only in their mother 
 wit ' or tradesmen ' called from shops and warehouses to sit in supreme 
 councils ', but ' men more than vulgar, bred up in the knowledge of 
 ancient and illustrious deeds '. 
 
 Here Milton's tract Of Education and his History of Britain 
 explain each other. When he wrote in 1644 that the reforming of 
 education was a thing ' for the want whereof this nation perishes ', 
 he did not mean that England was perishing for want of scholars, 
 but for want of statesmen. His imaginary pupils were from the 
 first to be ' stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and 
 worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages ', and in the end 
 1 Mr. John Milton's Character of the Long Parliament, p. 9. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 29 
 
 to be fit 'to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the 
 offices, both private and public, of peace and war '. Thus to qualify 
 them, one of their studies must be the study of politics. They should 
 be taught to know 'the beginning, end, and reasons of political 
 societies ; that they may not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, 
 be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, 
 as many of our great counsellors have lately shown themselves, but 
 steadfast pillars of the State '. l 
 
 ' Choice histories ' were also to be put into their hands, and in the 
 History of Britain Milton explains what he conceived to be the 
 practical value of his national history to a statesman. It could 
 teach him to understand the character of his countrymen in its 
 strength and weakness. By comparing the past and present, we 
 can 'raise a knowledge of ourselves both great and weighty', and 
 judge what we are able to achieve. 'For if it be a high point of 
 wisdom in every private man, much more is it in a nation, to know 
 itself, rather than puffed up with vulgar flatteries and encomiums, for 
 want of self-knowledge, to enterprise rashly and come off miserably 
 in great undertakings.' 2 
 
 With the exception of the first paragraph, the whole of this long 
 digression was omitted when Milton published his History in 1670. 
 The passage was published in 1681, after his death, under the title 
 of Mr. John Milton's Character of the Long Parliament and the 
 Assembly of Divines. According to the publisher, Mr. Milton had 
 intended the ' Character ' to be printed in his History, ' but out of 
 tenderness to a party (whom neither this nor much more lenity has 
 had the luck to oblige) it was struck out for some harshness, being 
 only such a digression as the History itself would not be discomposed 
 by its omission.' 3 
 
 Yet, while the suppressed passage is undoubtedly Milton's, and is 
 correctly placed at the beginning of the third book, the explanation 
 given of its omission is obviously absurd. The publisher recommended 
 it as ' very seasonable for these times ', and it would have been equally 
 seasonable in 1670. It was printed now as a controversial weapon 
 against the Presbyterians and the Nonconformists, and it could have 
 been printed eleven years earlier for the same reason. For there was 
 no thought in 1670 of any tenderness towards that party, as the 
 
 1 Prow Works, ii. 384, 385, 388. 
 
 2 History of Britain, p. 100. Of the digression there remains in the text 
 thirteen lines on p. 99 and eleven and a half on the next page. The rest was 
 omitted. 
 
 3 Masson, Life of Milton, pp. 806-7* 
 
30 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 passing of the second Conventicle Act in that year proved. Any 
 licenser would have welcomed the denunciation of the Assembly of 
 Divines as a powerful argument in favour of the policy of the king's 
 government. 
 
 The most reasonable explanation is that Milton suppressed the 
 passage himself. All had changed since 1648. The Assembly of 
 Divines was a thing of the past, and its survivors were now perse- 
 cuted rather than persecutors. The Long Parliament had come to 
 an end : obscurity, or captivity, or the scaffold had been the fate of 
 its leaders, and Milton was more inclined to lament their sufferings 
 than to point out their trespasses or omissions in the day of their 
 power. Englishmen themselves, instead of attempting the high 
 enterprise of erecting a free state, had contentedly relapsed into 
 their old servitude. Milton, therefore, whilst retaining the suggested 
 parallel between the condition of the Britons in the fifth century and 
 that of the English at the close of the first civil war, eliminated the 
 application to the politics of 1648. It had lost all practical utility. 
 
 Yet since all history should ' instruct and benefit them that read ', 
 the moral of the whole story should be made plain. 1 Poet or his- 
 torian, Milton was ever a preacher, and used British history for the 
 purpose of edification just as he would have used his British epic. 
 To his eyes the significance of the revolutions he had related was 
 clear. Each successive conquest of Britain was a just judgement 
 on the conquered race. The Britons were mere barbarians, < pro- 
 genitors not to be gloried in,' naturally and deservedly subdued by 
 the Romans. Roman civilization served but to prepare them for 
 bondage. Freedom made them worse instead of better, till ; scarce 
 the least footstep or impression of goodness was left remaining 
 through all ranks and degrees in the land ; except in some so very 
 few as hardly to be visible in a general corruption.' 2 Hence * the 
 many miseries and desolations brought by a divine hand on a perverse 
 nation ; driven, when nothing else could reform them, out of a fair 
 country into a mountainous and barren corner by strangers and 
 pagans. So much more tolerable in the eye of heaven is infidelity 
 professed than Christian faith and religion dishonoured by unchristian 
 works.' 3 By the ninth century ' the Saxons were full as wicked as 
 the Britons were at their arrival'. They fell before the Danes 
 because God purposed ' to punish our instrumental punishers, though 
 now Christians, by other heathen, according to His divine retaliation, 
 invasion for invasion, spoil for spoil, destruction for destruction'. 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 3. 2 Ibid., pp. 49, 71, 108, 128. 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 134. 
 
MILTON AS AN HISTORIAN 31 
 
 Vain had been the union of the seven kingdoms under one rule, for 
 ' when God hath decreed servitude on a sinful nation, fitted by their 
 own vices for no condition but servile, all estates of government are 
 alike unable to avoid it \ 1 
 
 Such, too, were the causes of the Norman Conquest. By their 
 vices the English had ' fitted themselves for this servitude '. The 
 clergy had ' lost all good literature and religion ' ; the great men 
 were ' given to gluttony and dissolute life ' ; the meaner sort ' spent 
 all they had in drunkenness. . . . Some few of all sorts were much 
 better among them ; but such was the generality.' And as the long- 
 suffering of God ' permits bad men to enjoy prosperous days with the 
 good, so His severity ofttimes exempts not good men from their share 
 in evil times with the bad '. 
 
 It remained only to apply this moral to the present moment, and 
 to warn the England of Charles II. Milton does this in the last 
 sentence of his History, added evidently in 1670 : ' If these were 
 the causes of such misery and thraldom to our ancestors, with what 
 better close can be concluded, than here in fit season to remember 
 this age in the midst of her security, to fear from like vices, without 
 amendment, the revolution of like calamities. 1 2 
 
 1 History of Britain, p. 190. 
 
 2 The inseparable connexion between liberty and virtue was the fundamental 
 doctrine of Milton's political pamphlets as well as his History, and he emphasized 
 it both in Paradise Lost and in Paradise Regained. Men, explains the Archangel 
 Michael to Adam, lost their inward freedom when they allowed their passions 
 to ' catch the government from reason ', and the loss of their outward freedom 
 followed. It was so with nations too. 
 
 ( Sometimes nations will decline so low 
 
 From virtue, which is freedom, that no wrong 
 
 But Justice, and some fatal curse annext 
 
 Deprives them of their outward liberty, 
 
 Their inward lost/ 
 
 Nor was it possible to deliver them. ( Who can of inward slaves make out- 
 ward free ? ' replies Christ to the Tempter. 
 
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