'-f" T THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GIFT OF Professor Benjamin H. Lehman 4^^ jvldi- j -wyi- LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN MILTON. BY W. CARLOS MARTYN, ESQ. PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by the American Tbact Society, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of the State of New York. GIFT PREFACE. A NUMBER of years ago, Southey declared that a life of Jolin Milton was "yet a desideratum iu Brit- ish literature." This is uo longer true of what may be distinctively termed, English letters ; but it is still true of American literature, which, up to this date, has never produced a biography of that illustrious republican and poet. Before the recent appearance of Mr. Masson's admirable and elaborate Life of Milton, of which an American firm undertook some years ago to give a reprint, but of which only the first volume has been published, those who were curious to acquaint them- selves with the details of his eventful and beneficent career, were obliged to glean their scanty informa- tion fi'om some six or eight outline sketches, usual- ly prefixed as introductory memoirs to the various editions of his works. But these, however useful as summaries of fact, are far below the dignity of independent biography. Mr. Masson's Life has supplied the English peo- ple with an accurate and complete account of the immortal author of "Paradise Lost f but even should its publication be completed in America, it can never, owing to its voluminous and costly char- acter — it consists of three bulky volumes, each con- taining upwards of seven hundred pages — become 575 4 PREFACE. in any proper sense a pipidar life of Milton, but Avill remain of value chiefly as a book of reference. A careful perusal of most of tlie so called "lives" of Milton, revealed the fact that they "were almost exclusively devoted to criticisms upon Milton the jjoet, while Milton the statesman, Milton the contro- versialist, antl Milton the j^^'^se icrifer, is either treated with neglect, or with supercilious contempt. Written mostly by authors connected with the Eng- lish establishment, when Milton's political and relig- ious opinions are touched upon, it is ajiologetically and deprecatingly. Since, on this side of the Atlantic, the republi- can ideas and the ecclesiastical truths which Milton so ardently espoused and so ably exi)ounded, have effected a fixed and lasting lodgment, and since it may, in some sense, be said that religious and polit- ical America sprang from his brain, it is somewhat singular that no American should have undertaken to present Milton's life to his fellow-countrymen, for the edification and instruction of those who stand so heavil}' in his debt. It certainlj- seems that this republic, based largely upon his ideas, and wedded enthusiastically to his religious opinions, owes John Milton at least the tribute and the gi-ate- ful recognition of a biographical record. This debt it has been the purpose of this biog- raphy, in a humble and unostentatious way, to pay. No special claim to originality is made for it, the desire of the author having been, not so much to Avrite an original life, as, by levying freely upon the existing and authentic data, to gi'oup in one volume those numerous and authentic historical, TKEFACE. r^ biographical, and anecdotal incidents wliicli now lie scattered through a variety of obscure and rare manuscripts and scanty lives, and to present these from an American stand-point. Milton's connection with the stirring events of the Eevolution of 16-iO was intimate and influential. Acting as Secretarj' of State during the ten years of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, that galaxy of glorious and statesmanlike measures which made England during that whole decade the arbiter of Europe, either originated with him, or received from his pen their justification and defence. Yet this period, so rich and fertile in his life, is, as we have said, passed by in comparative silence by most of his biographers; they entertaining no sympathy with his republicanism, while, captivated by his poetic splendors, they ignore even the inter- esting incidents of his youth. Thus Ivime}^ the only dissenting clergyman who has written Milton's biogi'aphy, though he has not suppressed the facts of his political career, whirls Milton on through all the scenes of his boyhood, through his college life, through his continental tour, to the commencement of the Revolution, in one short chapter of six pages. In these respects it is confidently believed that this volume will be found a decided improvement upon most of its predecessors. Considerable space is devoted to the incidents of his youth and early manhood, not only because these phases of his life are interesting in themselves, but because it is in- structive to learn the foundations upon which that august life was laid. An attempt has also been made in tliese pages G PREFACE. to rescue from comparative obscurity the magnifi- cent prose writings of John Milton. "It is to be regi'etted," says Macauley, " that the prose writings of Milton should in our time be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages, compared with which the finest dec- lamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stifi' with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of 'Paradise Losf has he ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works in which his feelmgs, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language, 'a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies.' " Since other biographers have ampl}' descanted upon Milton's transcendent merits as a poet, this biography contents itself, in most cases, with mere- ly mentioning the poems in the chronological order in which they were written, while large space is allotted to characteristic extracts from his religious and political pamphlets. It is perhaps proper to say that care has been taken to exclude from this volume, so far as could be, every thing of a partisan bias. Engaged in heated controversy at the most exciting period of English history, Milton's ardent temperament occa- sionally hurried him into rhetorical excesses which in his cooler moments no one was more ready to condemn than himself. He belongs to no single sect in religion, and to no single party in politics. PREFACE. 7 In the broadest sense, Eeligiou and Liberty unite to claim him as their well-loved son. Wedded himseH not to party, but to principle, he was impartial in his defence of what he esteemed truth, came the assault from open foe or professed friend. Thus he opposed Archbishop Laud when that prelate* un- dertook to stifle freedom of discussion. In the same spirit he lashed the inconsistencies of the Puritans, when, themselves in power, they continued to shackle the press. He was earnest not to elevate a party, but to elevate mankind. In his fourfold character of Christian, states- man, poet, and man, Milton deserves all the respect that he has ever received. His sj)lendid genius and steadfast devotion to liberty and progress compel the homage of all generous and api^reciative souls. God grant that these pages, devoted to the delinea- tion of the life of one of the grandest teachers and benefactors ever lent the human race, may persuade all readers, to the extent of their ability, to emulate his virtues, and to be as faithful to Christianity and freedom in their day and generation, as John Mil- ton was in his. The authorities consulted in the compilation of this biography have been numerous and diverse. Milton's own works, and his letters of state have, of coui'se, been liberally used ; but the author wishes * It is j)roiDer to say that when the word '■^prelaie " occiu's in the follo'ning pages, it is used, not in its modern and more legitimate EngHsh and American sense, but as it was under- stood in Milton's age, as synonymous -ndth that extreme and intolerant high-churchism which bordered on the Vatican, and of which Archbishop Laud and his associates were the fitting representatives. 8 PREFACE. to express Lis special indebtedness to the -works of Masson, Symmons, Todd, Ivimey, and Tolaud; and to Wood's curions " History and Antiquities of Oxford," to Philips' interesting Life, to Aubrey's quaint work, to the Gleanings of Mr. Hunter, to Keightley's Memoir, Edmunds' Biography, John- son's life, and to the very valuable papers of Mr. Marsh relating to Milton's later years. Besides these and some other authorities, a number of col- lateral works bearing upon the ecclesiastical and civil history of that age, have been consulted from time to time, as necessity arose or convenience sug- gested. It is believed that the notes attached to this vol- ume will be found interesting and instructive to some readers. And now this book, the result of much thought and careful labor, is committed to the public with a prayer that it may be esteemed in some sort wor- thy of its illustrious subject; and that it may be instrumental in kindlino; in the bosoms of all who peruse its pages, that ardent love of truth, that up- right devotion to justice, that pure morality, and that passion for Christian liberty wliieh so prei'mi- nently distinguished the splendid and beneficent career of John Milton. New York, January, 1866. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Milton's epoch — His birth — Ancestry — Parents — Early characteris- tics and education — His tutors — St. Paul's school — Departure for Cambridge - - 15 CHAPTER II. Old London — Its population^The great fire — The Llermaid tav- ern — The Spread-eagle in Bread-street — The fomily circle — Mil- ton's associates - - 29 CHAPTER III. Christ College, Cambridge — Milton's rooms — The town — College disorders — Milton's opinion of the course of study — Troubles in consequence — His correspondence — The plague — Public affairs — ^tlilton's college triumphs — -Completes his course — His personal appearance - 42 CHAPTER IV. Milton at home — Situation of Hortou — Milton designed for the church — His reluctance to enter it— His reasons — Condition of the chiirch of England — Bishop Laud — His tyi'anny and brutal- ity — Milton's disgust thereat — His final selection of a hterary Ufe — His high objects — Condition of hteratiire in his age— Mil- ton's authorship — His character — Death of his mother — Quits England for the Continent -- GO CHAPTER V. Continental politics in 1638 — "The thirty years' war" — Milton on the Continent — Tour through France — Italy — Its attractions — Toiir through Italy — Nice — Genoa — Leghorn — Pisa — Flor- ence — Its artistic and literary charms — The academies — Visit to Galileo — Milton's free discussion of religious topics — Home — 1* 10 CONTENTS. Milton's cordial reception there — The cantatrice — Najjles — Mil- ton's intimacj' with Manso — News of the civil war — He deter- mines to return to England — Retraces his steps — Venice — Ge- neva — Its character — Milton reenters England 77 CHAPTER VI. The period immediately preceding the civil war — King Charles in- vades Scotland for the purpose of compelling the Scotch Puri- tans to confonn with the ritual of the prelates — Consequent indignation and excitement — Scottish opinion of the "SerWce Book" — Signing of the covenant — Demonstrative excitement in England — Parliament convoked — Refuses to grant the king required supplies until he compUes with their demands — An- ger of Charles, and dissolution of the Parliament — Public affairs grow more and more unsettled — The king obliged again to convoke the Parliament — The "Long" Parliament — Its power and character — Impeachment of Strafford and Laiid — Further measui-es — Folly and treachery of the king — Repairs to York, and inaugurates the civil war — Character of the two sides - -- 99 CHAPTER VII. Death of ]\Iilton's friend Deodati — Residence in London — Milton as "Schoolmaster" — Slurs of his critics upon that occupation — His plan of education — lililton enters the arena of polemical war- fare — "Treatise on the Reformation from Popery " — " Smectjmi- nus " — Milton's connection with it — Attack on his moral char- acter — His defence — Ground of Milton's objections to the Eng- lish church— His belief in complete toleration — His own opinion of his controversial powers — The verdict of posterity 106 CHAPTER Vni. Movements of the Parliament — Abolition of diocesan Episcopacj' — Milton the champion of impartial liberty — Inconsistent con- duct of the Puritans in continuing the printing license on their accession to power — Milton's "Plea for Unlicensed Printing" — Sketch of the history of printing in England — Restrictions upon it — The plethora of books in that generation — Consequent in- convenience of the license — Brilliant character of Milton's argu- ment in fiivor of an nnshackled press — Extracts — Its failure to produce the desired change in the License law — The freedom of the press finally secured half a century later 120 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTER IX. Milton's marriage — The Powell family — Folly of the match — His wife's cavalier education — Her desertion of him — Reasons for it — Positive refusal to return — Milton's consequent repudiation of her — Publishes four pamphlets in defence of his conduct — His doctrine of divorce — Clamors against his theories— Sum- moned before the bar of the House of Lords — Speedy dismissal — • Later indorsers of his doctrine of divorce — The pamphlets not the offspring of spite, but of sincere conviction — Takes several new pupils — His father comes to reside with him — Proposes to marry again — Singular reconciliation with his M'ife — Generosity of Jklilton's conduct — Publishes' the first edition of his poems in 1645 — Death of his father — Birth of two daughters — Ai^point- ment to the Latin secretaryship of state 13-4 CHAPTER X. Resume of the progress of the civil war — Cromwell appointed gen- eralissimo of the Parliament — Consequent speedy dispersal of the king's adherents — Charles' flight into Scotland — Demanded by the Parliament — His rendition — Imprisonment at Holmby- house — At Hampton Court — Position of English parties — The Presbyterians — The Lidependents — Cromwell endeavors to per- suade the king to proclaim amnesty and liberty — His failure — Detennines to crush Charles— Intrigues of the Parliament — Return of the armj', and forcible ejection of the Presbyterians from power — Execution of the king — The government new- modelled — The Council of State — jMilton appointed Latin Sec- retary — Accepts the oflice against his inclinations and throiigh patriotism — Is a passive spectator of the execution of the king — His history of England— Work on the tenure of kings and mag- istrates — Other publications 147 CHAPTER XI. Lifluential position of England under the Commonwealth — Per- sonal character of the members of the Council of State— Henrj"- Vane, the younger — John Bradshaw — Character of Milton's diplomatic correspondence — Appearance of the king's book — Milton answers it — The ' ' Iconoclastes " — Great ability and elab- orate completeness of the pamphlet — Milton's bitter raillery at the absurd pretensions of the royal party to religions imi^ulses — The book runs through several editions — Its powerful effect — 12 CONTENTS. Milton's doubts concerning the king's authorship of the -work he has been confuting — Dr. Gauden finally proclaimed the real author by Charles 11. and the duke of York — ililton's private aflfairs — Bhth of a son — His changes of residence — His income at this period - 160 CHAPTER XII. Jlilton's reputation becomes cosmopolitan — Charles Stuart in exile instigates Salmasius to write a defence of the Enghsh mon- archy — Sketch of the life of Salmasius — His vast enidition — Publishes the "Defensio Regia" — Sensation caused by its ap- l^earance — Its character — Milton selected by the Council of State to answer it — Publication of his ' ' Defence of the Enghsh People," in 1G51 — Its personalities — Masterly character of its argument — Extracts — llemarkable effect of Milton's pamphlet- Congratulations and acknowledgments showered upon him from all sides — The fate of Salmasius — Milton's severity 173 CHAPTER XIII. The home effect of the "Defence of the People of England" — Milton's domestic affairs — Death of his wife — Gradual approach of blinchiess, and eventual total loss of sight — His letter thereon to Leonard Philarus — Milton's enemies attribute his blindness to his writing agamst the king — His noble and Chi'istian forti- tude under the affliction — Sonnet to Cjaiac Sldnner — His notice of the slanders of his foes — Sonnet on his blindness — His .sec- ond marriage, and death of his second wife — His afflictions, 186 CHAPTER XIV. Milton's literaiy activitj- not diminished bj' his domestic losses oi by his blindness — llei^lics to his first "Defence" — Publication of his "Second Defence of the People of England" — Resume of the political situation — Cromwell's so-called xisuqiation — ]\Iilton's acquiescence in the change of administration — Ap- pointed Latin Secretarj'' to the Lord Protector — His admiration for Cromwell's character — Sonnet on the Protector — Extracts from the "Second Defence" — Cromwell's character as .sketched by Milton — His closing addi-ess — Great effectiveness of the second defence — Final close of the controversy — Milton every- where hailed as conqueror 199 CONTENTS. 13 CHAPTER XV. Milton's retii-emeut from the arena of active controversy — His de- votion to his studies and the duties of his office — Raleigh's "Cabinet Council" — Verses to Christiana, Queen of Sweden — His literary projects — Commences " Paradise Lost" — His stu- diousness — -The state letters and papers — Cromwell's interces- sion in behalf of the persecuted Vaudois — Sketch of the facts which occasioned it — Milton's sonnet— His connection with the intercessioji — Character of his letters thereon to the various con- tinental powers — Eesult of the intercession 219 CHAPTER XVI. The death of Oliver Cromwell — Chaotic state of the nation — Eich- ard Cromwell appointed Protector — His abdication — Parliametit convened — Renewed ascendency of the Presbyterians — Milton's reappearance as a pohtical writer — The treatise on the "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Matters" — "Treatise on the Removal of Hirelings out of the Church " — Effect of these writings upon Milton's old republican admirers — Continued and increasing demoralization of the Commonwealth — Milton's treatise on the "Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth" — Extracts — Monk's treachery — The restoration of the monarchy — Milton secretes himself — Close of his public life — Character of the Restoration — Sketch of the principles which governed Mil- ton's public career 229 CHAPTER XVII. Milton's safe asylum — His proseciition decreed bj' the Parliament- Two of his pamphlets burned by the common hangman — His mock funeral — Milton's powerful friends at court — The govern- ment afraid to punish him — The act of oblivion — Animadver- sions upon the clemency of Charles II. — Milton summoned be- fore the House of Commons — His speedy release — His various residences — jMilton's thii-d marTiage — Character of his "«ife — Anedotes of her hirsband — Habits — The unkindness of his children — His wife rescues him from their tyr-anny — ililton in- vited by the king to reassume the office of Latin Secretary of State — Anecdote of his refusal to accept that position 248 CHAPTER XVIII. Milton resumes his epic pen — His acquaintance with the Quaker, EUwood — Ellwood's connection with Milton — Completion of 14 CONTENTS. "Paradise Lost," and "Paradise Regained" — Eemarks npon them — Milton's poem barely escapes the suspicious scrutiny of the licenser — Various criticisms upon these two gi'eat epics, 261 CHAPTER XIX. Milton still held in great respect and veneration — His letter to Pe- ter Heimbach — Publication of the "Paradise Eegained," and "Samson Agonistes" — Character of the latter poem — Milton's literarj' condescension — His scheme of logic — His ardor of com- position undimmed by age — His pamphlet against Popery, and in favor of a closer union among the evangeUcal sects — The danger which Slilton seeks to avert, necessitates the revolution of 1688 — Close of Milton's literary career— Feels the approach of death, and makes his will — Milton's death — Eemarks - - 273 CHAPTER XX. Eesum6 of Milton's character — His daily habits — His size and appearance — Personal qualities — Habits of composition — His domestic character — Hjs religious tenets — His propertj' — Ee- marks upon his position after the Restoration — Drj'deu's esti- mate of MUton — Milton's intellectual qualities — Temper, grav- itj'^ — Dignity — His candor and kindness — His ready and ardent defence of his principles — Milton's erudition — Favorite au- thors — His preference of the Bible before all other books — His influence upon his own time, and upon posterity — His influence upon the English language — His influence upon the British Constiti;tion — Upon the formation of the American Republic — Final survey of his life — Conclusion 287 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN MILTON. CHAPTER. I. John Milton, one of the grandest names in letters, statesmanship, and Christian phi- losophy, had his nativity cast, by the blessing of God, in one of those transition ages when great and positive intellects are enabled, through the crumbling of old ideas and prin- ciples, to new- model their own generation, and to mould the future to a grander destiny. His remarkable genius found ample scope for its exercise in the stirring days of the most momentous epoch in English history. And broadcast in the furrows of the time, lay scat- tered the seed of a growth destined to be pro- 16 THE LIFE AND TIMES digiously effective both for good and evil in the world. It was preeminently a period of interest- ing and instructive import, and singularlj^ ])roductive of famous men. In 1G08, the year of Milton's birth, Spenser had been less than ten years dead, and Shakspeare still wrote. So nearly contemporary was this august trinity of poets. The Elizabethan era, fascinatingly gallant and romantic, had already produced Lord Bacon, who wedded religion to the pro- foundest philosophy in his intellectual theory if not in his daily life, the chivalric Raleigh, and the gentle Sydney, who could write upon his frontlet, and with equal truth, the motto of the French knight Baj^ard, "Without fear and without reproach," and wdio fell a martyr to Protestantism while fighting for the religious independence of the Netherlands. Elizabeth's whole reign had been full of that adventure which captivates the imagination, and w^as also distinguished for that learning and religious enthusiasm wdiich elevates the mind and in- spires the heart. Witnessing the meeting shock between nascent Protestantism and the OF JOHN MILTON. 17 Eoman see armed ccq^a-pie for the tilt, it saw Catholicism completely unhorsed in England. At the commencement of the seventeenth centurj^, the Eeformation, triumphant in that island, had broken rank into innumerable in- dependent sects, busied mainly in acrimonious controversy concerning doctrinal points not of vital consequence, and united only in claiming from the state larger civil and religious liber- ty. The Roman-catholic party, still numerous and intriguing, though outnumbered and ostra- cised at court, recognized the essential agree- ment of the despotic principles of the then reigning house of Stnart with their own ten- ets, and therefore yielded an unwavering sup- port to the arbitrar}^ acts of James First, the most pedantic and weak of sovereigns; and of Charles First, the most treacherous and stubborn. The Catholics were still further confirmed in this course by perceiving that the Puritans were constantly drifting into greater hostility to the court, and they reason- ed, rightly as the sequel showed, that when the clasli came and the king required support, he would look for it to that party which had IS THE LIFE AND TIMES been steadfast in its devotion to him even when exiled from his smile. If the king proved successful, they would regrasp the reins of power; if unsuccessful, they would at least have the consolation of knowing that they had made a bold push for the reinstatement of their influence. A brilliant court, selfish, ty- rannical, and corrupt ; cavaliers besotted with wine and license, grown heedless of right and indifferent to justice ; the Puritans, shocked by this indecency, working with incessant indus- try and marvellous talent to inaugurate a new regime; the Catholics alert and intriguing; the commons intensely active through the dawn- ing of intelligence ; every tavern the head- quarters of a political clique ; general discon- tent begotten of the despotic policy of the crown ; the people, like a blind Samson, grasp- ing for the pillars of their prison-house : these were the discordent elements which even so early as the year of Milton's birth had begun to ferment : such was the rotten society through which there passed, forty years later, the stern ploughshare of the civil war. Of course Milton's mind could not but OF JOHN MILTON. 19 take color in large measure from that era of sane giants, and giants gone mad. Out of the chaos of opinions he shaped and elaborated his own theories, based mainly on Bible truth, and so grew to be the thinker and the idealist of the Revolution — the brain of English Prot- estantism in the seventeenth century, John Milton was born on the morning of the 9th of December, 1608, in the city of London, and parish of All-hallows, in his fa- ther's house, in Bread-street. The Milton family, which was of gentle blood, had originally resided in the hamlet of Milton, near Abingdon, in Oxfordshire ; but having espoused the unsuccessful side in the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster in the preceding century, their es- tate, in common with many others, had been sequestrated, and they were in consequence reduced to comparative obscurity, though con- tinuing to hold property to a considerable extent, which had descended on the female side. The poet's grandfather, whose name was John Milton, was under-keeper or ranger to 20 THE LIFE AND TIMES the forest of Sliotover, near Ilorton, in Oxford- shire. The poet's father, also named John ^lilton, was a gentleman of varied accomplishments, and had been educated at Christ church, Ox- ford,* where he embraced the Protestant faith, being in consequence disinherited by his fa- ther, who was a bigoted Catholic. The stu- dent being tlms thrown npon his own resour- ces, chose for his support the profession of a scrivener. This term, at least in its old sense, is now obsolete ; and it may be interesting to know precisely what a scrivener was in Milton's boyhood, and when James First was king. Scriveners at that time were penmen of all kinds of writing, literary manuscripts as well as charters and law papers. Chaucer, the fa- ther of English poetry, has an epigram in which he lampoons his "scrivener" Adam for negligent workmanship. After the inven- tion of printing, the business of the scrivener became very similar to that of a modern attor- ney, or of an attornc}' in conjunction with a • Dr. Todd's Life, p. 1. Mitford's Lifo, p. 1, Vol. I. OF JOHN MILTON. 21 law-stationer/'' The scriveners were an an- cient and quite numerous body, and were reg- ularly incorporated in the time of Milton's father. The profession was esteemed an hon- orable one, and though its members might be sent for, as in the instance mentioned, much of their business was done in their own "shops," the general aspect of which was very like the offices of modern lawyers, a chief desk for the master, side desks for the apprentices, pigeon- holes and drawers for parchments, and seats for customers. A scrivener who had money could find excellent opportunities for lending it at a profit. Being, as his son has written of him with proper pride, "a man of the utmost integrity," the scrivener Milton prospered rapidly. His industry and prudent conduct soon put him in possession of an extensive estate, so that he owned not only the "Spread-eagle" in Bread- street, where the poet was born, so named * In Shakspeare's "Tamiug of the Shrew," a boy is sent for the scrivener to draw np a marriage settlement : " Wc '11 pass the business privately and well. Send for your daughter by your servant here : My boy shall fetch the scrivener presently." 22 THE LIFE AND TIMES from the armorial bearings of the family, but also another house called the "Rose," in the same street, together with various other houses in different quarters of London. He was pas- sionately fond of the line arts, especially mu- sic, in which he was remarkably skilful. Sir John Hawkins and Dr. Burney have each se- lected specimens of his talent in their histories 3f music. He is said to have been "a volu- minous composer, and equal in science, if not in genius, to the best musicians of his age."'-' It is always interesting to know something of the mothers of great men. Such inquiries almost invariably reveal the fact that they were women of remarkable character. Of Milton's mother enough is known to convince us that she was possessed of rare talent; and the loving pen of her son has recorded of her that she was respectabh' connected and de- scended, greatly esteemed for her virtues, and particularly distinguished for that charity upon which the apostle pronounces his glowing eulo- gium. Concerning her maiden name there is great conflict of authorities, but it is perhaps * Dr. Bumey's History of Music, Vol. III., p. 134. I OF JOHN MILTON. 23 safe to conclude that she was a Caston, of a genteel family derived originally from Wales.* Above all, both the parents of the future champion of civil and religious liberty were conscientious and earnest Christians, of which, as we have seen, the father had given con- vincing proof by his renunciation of the errors of Romanism, in which he had been educated, and which were sanctioned by parental author- ity, and powerfully enforced by the persuasion of temporal interest. The sense of religious duty must have been keen, and the knowledge of theologic truth considerable, which could enable a man to turn his face resolutely away from such inducements, and accept cheerfully and without a murmur disinheritance and ear- ly penury. We have thus dwelt upon the characteris- tics of Milton's parents, not only because they are in themselves interesting and instructive, but also because they had a marked influence upon his whole life. Their religious tenets made on the reflective, strong, and enthusias- * Todd's Life of Jklilton, p. 111. Vol. I. Massou's Life, chap. I., Passim. Symmons' Life, p. 7, Vol. VII. 24: THE LIFE AND TIMES tic mind of Milton an early and lasting im- pression. Milton was remarkable even in his infanc}'. Aubrey* says of him that "he was a poet at ten." This bud of genius was fondly noticed, wisely encouraged, and anxiously matured by his })arents and instructors, until it bloomed in the marvellous glories of his riper manhood. Taught from the outset with scrupulous care, he was so happy as to share the benefits both of public and private education. His first instruction was gotten from a pri- vate tutor named Thomas Young, whom Au- brey calls "a Puritan in Essex who cut his hair short." He appears to have been a man of rare parts, and succeeded in speedily win- ning the love and respect of his pupil, both of which he ever after retained. Under his able and conscientious instruction Milton made rapid progress, and from Thomas Young he doubtless imbibed manj' of those religious and political principles which he was called later so i)owerfnlly to vindicate. Milton publicly • Johu Aubrey, boru iu 1G26. He was a celebrated antiquary, and made the history and antiquities of England his peculiar stiidy. or JOHN MILTON. 25 evinced liis gratitude b}" addressing to Mr. Young his fourth elegy and two elegant Latin epistles. Afterwards, when in the zenith of his power, he caused his old tutor to return from Hamburg, whither he had repaired in the commencement of the reign of Charles First, on account of his religious opinions, and where he was officiating as chaplain to the English merchants under Cromwell's rule, and accept the mastership of Jesus College, Cam- bridge. This fine incident shows the tenacity of Milton's friendship, and it further proves his kindness of heart, and that in his own pros- perity he did not forget his more unfortunate associates. In 1618 a very beautiful portrait of Mil- ton's boyish face was painted. The picture is now widely known. It was drawn by a young Dutch painter, Cornelius Jansen, recently ar- rived from Amsterdam, and then rising into fame. The portrait cost five broad pieces, about twenty pounds in the present English money, or nearly one hundred dollars in Unit- ed States currency, a large price for those days. It was executed in order to operate as 2G THE LIFE AND TIMES an acldiuoiial iiicoiilive to tlie continued exer- tion of the thoughtful boy. The prevailing expression of the face is a lovable seriousness; and in looking at it one can well fancy that those lines from "Paradise Lost" which the first engraver ventured to inscribe beneath the portrait, were really written by the poet with some reference to his own recollections of his boyhood : ' ' "WTien I was yet a child, no childisli play To me seemed pleasing ; all my mind was set Serious to leam and know, and thence to do What might be pubUe good ; myself I thought Bom to that end — born to promote all triith And righteous things." Thomas Young quitted England in 1623, npon which event Milton was sent at St. Paul's school, London, then in charge of Alexander Gill, with whose son, then acting as usher, he contracted a warm and lasting friendship. Here the young student was initiated into several of the modern languages. His insa- tiable thirst for knowledge habituallj^ kept him at his books till long past midnight — this pre- cocious boy of fifteen years. His passionate devotion to letters, making him utterly inat- OF JOHN MILTON. 27 tentive to his liealtli, was the unquestionable source of that blindness in which his sight was quenched in after-life. Writing in 1641, while his father was yet alive, Milton thus describes his early studies : " I had from my first years, by the cease- less diligence and care of my father — whom God recompense — 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." And again, after his father's death, he writes, "My father des- tined me, while yet a little child, for the study of humane letters. Both at the grammar- school and at home, he caused me to be in- structed daily." These sentences summarily describe Milton's education prior to his colle- giate course. In 1623, while in his fifteenth year, he gave several proofs of his precocious poetical genius, among other things translating the one hundred and fourteenth and the one hundred and thirty-sixth Psalms into English verse. These have won high praise from most critics, as being clear, firmly worded, and harmoni- 28 THE LIFE AND TIMES ous. The translations are mainly of interest now, as showing the early proclivities of his mind towards sacred things, and as marking the dawn on the horizon of letters of that mag- nificent genius which was eventually to sheet the whole literary heavens with unwonted splendor. Milton remained at St. Paul's school during two 3'ears. Upon completing his seventeenth year, he was removed to Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner in Christ col- le2:e on the 12th of Februarv, 1 621-5,* bein"; already distinguished as a classical scholar, and conversant with most of the modern tongues. * The reason for this double date is, that prior to 1752 the year in England began, not on the 1st of January, but on the 25th of ilarch. All those days therefore which intervened between the 31st of December and the 25th of March, which we should now date as belonging to a particular year, were then dated as belong- ing to the year preceding that. As we now date, Jlilton entered college in February, 1625, but in the old reckoning it was Febru- ary, 1624 OF JOHN MILTON. 29 CHAPTER II. Before accompan3ing Milton to Cam- bridge, we desire to turn aside and devote a chapter to the scenes, influences, and society of his bojiiood. It has been well said that a great part of the education of every child con- sists of those impressions, visual and other, which its senses are busily though uncon- Bciousl}^ drinking in from the scenes amid which it daily lives. Familiarity therefore with the early associations of famous men, not unfrequently affords a key to their whole char- acter. The London of 1608 was not that mam- moth Babel, the London of our time. In place of its present two millions and a half of inhab- itants, the city contained, in the days when Milton's boyish feet trod its pavements, some- thing under two hundred thousand souls. The great fire of 1666 licked up with its flaming tongues most of the antiquities of London. Bread-street, Cheapside, the old taverns, round 30 THE LIFE AND TIMES wnose quaint gables clustered the rich tradi- tions of the past, the famous tenements of the rich burghers — all succumbed. The burned district was, however, rebuilt with as strict attention to the old sites as the surveyor's art of that day could insure ; so that these portions of the cit}^ occupy the same relative position on the map of London as before the fire. We may therefore, with a little faith and a little fancy, rcpeople the old streets until the past shall once more live and breathe. Cheapside was then, as now, a famous thor- oughfare, gay with shops, and bustling with traffic. ]\Iilton had onl}" to go a few paces from his father's door to see the whole of that great street almost at a glance. Here the din of trade was at its loudest. The shops of the mercers and goldsmiths lined the sidewalks. Some of the most noted hostelries of the city there welcomed travellers. Multitudinous foot- passengers thronged the pavements, while horsemen, chairs, and an occasional coach — for of late years these vehicles had come into fashion, and the complaint was made that " the world was running on wheels with many OF JOHN MILTON. 31 whose parents had been glad to go on foot" — passed and repassed. Whenever there was any city pageant, it was snre to pass through Cheapside. The whole aspect of the street, with its houses of various heights, nearly all turned gablewise to the street, all with pro- jecting upper-stories of wood-work, and dotted with latticed windows, was strangely pictur- esque. Some of the buildings were, according to the ideas of that age, as imposing as any in Christendom. Eastward was a row of many "fair and large houses possessed of mercers;" and westward, beginning at the very corner of Bread-street, was another row, "the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops," says Stow, a careful antiquarian, "that be within the walls of London, or elsewhere in Eng- land." Bread-street stretched southward from Cheapside, and was "so called," says Stow, "of bread anciently sold there." It was in Milton's youth one of the most respectable streets in the city, "wholly inhabited by rich merchants," who had their shops below and their dwellings above. It could boast of two 32 THE LIFE AND TIMES parish churches, and of " divers fair inns for good receipt of carriers and other travellers." "The Spread-eagle," the shop and dwelling of the scrivener Milton, was, as we have seen, situated in this street: It was a commodious and sightly building, fully in accordance with its owner's prosperous circumstances, and was not at all put to the blush by its neighbors. Near this house was the parish church of All- hallows, where Milton sat every Sunday with his father and mother, and in which he had been christened. Also in the immediate neighborhood was the famous "Mermaid tavern," the resort of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and other great spirits of the time, of which Beaumont thus speaks in a sonnet to Ben Jonson : "What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ! heard -words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if they every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole soul in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life ; then, when there hath been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past — wit that might warriint be For the whole city to talk foolishly OF JOHN MILTON. 33 Till that were cancelled ; and when that was gone, "We left an air behind us which alone Was able to make the two next companies Eight witty, though but downright fools." Something of all this the youthful eyes of Milton must have taken in. But more impor- tant than contact with the world of city sights and the gay humors of the town, was the daily routine of his home existence. Let us then step across the threshold of the Spread-eagle, and while the roar of Cheapside and the sur- rounding city is muffled in the distance, catch a glimpse of the family circle. We see a warm and happy home. Peace, comfort, and industry reign within it. Dur- ing the day the scrivener is busy with his apprentices and clients ; but in the evening the family are gathered together, the father on one side, the mother on the other, the eldest daughter Anne and her brother John seated near, with little Kit, afterwards Sir Christo- pher Milton, who was seven years younger than John, at his mother's knee. A grave, Puritanic piety was then the order of the day in the households of most of the respectable citizens of London. Religious reading and 2* 34 THE LIFE AND TIMES devout exercises ^Youl(l therefore be the daily practice of the family. la this way a predis- position towards the serious, a regard for religion as the chief concern of life, and a dutiful love of the parents who so taught him, would be cultivated in Milton from his infan- cy. Happ3^ child to have such parents ; happy parents to have such a child. Reference has already been made to the fondness of Milton's father for music. The composer of a variety of madrigals, he had also devoted his talent to harmonizing a num- ber of the Psalms— those familiar tunes, Nor- wich and York, being both of them his lyrical productions. "The tenor part of York tune," says old Sir John Hawkins, "was so well known in ni}^ days, that half the nurses in England were used to sing it by way of lulla- by', " and the chimes of many country churches had "played it six or eight times in twenty- four hours, from time immemorial." That his father was a man so gifted was very material to Milton. In his scheme for an improved education for children, he gives a high place to music. "The intervals of more OF JOHN MILTON. 35 severe labor," lie sa^'s, "might both with profit and delight be taken up in recreating and composing their travailed spirits with the sol- emn and divine harmonies of music heard or learned, either wdiile the skilful organist plies his grave or fanciful descant in loft}^ fugues, or the whole symphony with artful and un- imaginable touches, adorn and grace the well- studied chords of some choice composer; some- times the lute or soft organ-stop waiting on elegant voices, either to religious, martial, or civil ditties, which, if wise men and proph- ets be not extremely out, have a great power over dispositions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle." Of this kind of education Milton had the full advantage, and it was a source of amusement and praise which yielded him throughout the stormy phases of his life the sweetest consolation. Often as a child he must have bent over his father while compos- ing, or listened to him as he played. Often, at evening, when two or three of his father's musical acquaintances would call, the voices in the Spread-eagle would sufl&ce for a little household concert. Then if one of his father's 3G THE LIFE AND TIMES compositions were selected, the words might be, ' ' O liail I Things, like as a dove, Then should I from these troubles fly ; To wilderness I would remove, To spend my life, and there to die." Or perhaps the selection was the 2Tth Psalm, especially adapted to York, and pregnant with deep significance : ' ' The Lord is both my health and light, Shall man make me dismayed ? Sith God doth give me strength and might, Why should I be afraid ? "\Miile that my foes ■with all their strength, Begin with me to bawl, And think to eat me up at length, ThemselvesTiave caught the fall." Joining in the chorus with his sweet j'oung voice, Milton became a singer almost as soon as he could speak. We can see him tottling to the organ, his tiny feet scarce able to bear their burden, and picking out little melodies by ear, and stretching his lingers in search of pleasing chords ! According to Aubrey, his father taught him the whole theory of music, and made him an accomplished organist. Af- terwards, when his philanthropic labors had brought upon him persecution, poverty, and OF JOHN MILTON. 37 distress, when the hoarse clamors of the fickle multitude sounded ominously in his ears, the young musician, then grown old, blind, and infirm, would still, as in happier days, repair serenely to his organ " to sing, And build the lofty rhyme. " Here the sightless poet, forgetting the cares and vexations of his checkered career, peo- pled the dim twilight with the Seraphim and Cherubim of his august dreams. So David, flying from the vanities of earth, poured out his soul in praises to his Creator upon the psaltery and the harp. So Luther sought, in his tumultuous age, recreation and composure from his plaintive violin. But in the most musical household, music occupies but a portion of the domestic even- ing; and sometimes it would not be musical friends, but acquaintances of more general or difi'erent tastes, that would step in to soend an hour or two at the Spread-eagle. The Eev. Richard Stocke, pastor of the par- ish of All-hallows, was a frequent and welcome visitor. "This worthy," says Fuller, " was a 38 THE LIFE AND TIMES constant, judicious, and religious preacher," a " zealous Puritan." There were young men, afterwards high in the church, who made it a point never to miss one of his sermons. In one essential part of a pastor's duty, that of interesting the young, he had a peculiar fac- ulty. Indeed his influence over the entire parish was extraordinarv ; and the fruit of his labors, "in converting many and confirming more in religion," was abundantly to be seen. Then one of the elder Milton's coparish- ioners and nearest neighbors was Humphrey Lownes, a printer and publisher, residing at the sign of the "Star," in Bread-street, one of a family then and since well known in the literary world, and himself a man of worth and ingenuit}'. With Lownes, Milton struck a great friendship ; and the publisher, perceiving the boy's wondrous precocity and appetite for reading, loaned him from time to time such books as he desired. In this manner he first read Spenser's works and the poems of that quaint old pedant Sylvester, for whom Milton then entertained a profound admiration, much modified however in mature life. OF JOHN MILTON. 39 Among the frequenters of the Spread-eagle at that time there was also at least one author, John Lane, whom Milton's nephew, Philips, calls "a fine old queen Elizabeth gentleman," the author of several poems, but who has now passed from remembrance. If Mr. Stocke, Humphrey Lownes, and John Lane met in an evening at the hospita- ble hearth of the scrivener, there were other interesting topics besides Stocke's theology, Lownes' books, Lane's poetry, and Milton's music to invite conversation. Undoubtedly the talk would often drift upon the gloomy state of national affairs. Ever since the famous Hampton Court conference, held in 1603-4, at which both the great Protestant parties had appeared before the king, James First, to plead their views and enlist his sympathies, the hopes entertained by the Puritan party had been more and more disappointed. The Scottish sovereign had become, as decidedly as his predecessor, the supporter of prelacy in the church, and the maintainer of the most ultra notions of the royal prerogative in the state. In an English household like that of the elder 40 THE LIFE AND TIMES Milton, it is certain that this state of things must have provoked frequent and aggrieved comment — comment which the mature and inquiring mind of the boyish poet must have easily understood and treasured up. Such were some of the scenes amid which John Milton was reared — such some of the early influences which surrounded him — such some of his first associates. It was at this pe- riod of his life, as it may be supposed, that he imbibed that spirit of devotion which actuated his bosom to his latest moment upon earth. We need not extend our search beyond his own hearthstone for the influences which mould- ed his life and anchored it to truth. The warm religious sentiments there communicated to his mind were strengthened by the precepts and practice of his preceptor, Thomas Young, in whom religion was exalted into enthusiasm, and who submitted, as we have seen, to exile upon the requisition of his conscience. But whatever may have been the source of his fervid spirit, its action upon Milton's mind was from the outset powerfully marked ; it seemed to enlarge his mental capacity, and to give his or JOHN MILTON. 41 faculties direction and emphasis. Invigorating and elevating, we are nnquestionably indebted to devotion not merely for the subject, but in large part for the sublimity of the "Paradise Lost." 42 THE LIFE AND TIMES CHAPTER III. It is not known preciselj^ wh}' the elder Milton selected Cambridge for his son, espec- ially' as he ma}" be supposed to have been somewhat prejudiced in favor of the rival uni- versity, Oxford, where he had himself studied. In the absence of all authoritative data, specu- lation only is possible. The real cause of the choice may have been in the reputation which Christ College, tlie special department of Cambridge to which Milton was dispatched, had acquired as the seat not only of sound learning, but also of vital and evangelical piet3^ " It may without flattery be said of this house," says old Fuller, '' 'many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all,' if w^e consider the many divines who in so short a time have here had their education." A num- ber of distinguished prelates had indeed in the preceding century been graduated there, while the genius of the college pointed proudly to or JOHN MILTON. d3 the roll of its alumni which embraced the names of the reformer Latimer, the antiquarian Leland, Harrington the translator of that elegant Italian poet Ariosto, and Sir Philip Sidney — a very honorable list. Christ College was one of the most com- fortable, as it was among the largest, in the university. It was substantially built, with a spacious inner quadrangle, a handsome dining- hall, and an extensive garden, provided with a bowling-green, a pond, and alcoves ; it also possessed shady walks, in true academic taste. Tradition still points out Milton's rooms. " They were," says Masson, " in the older part of the building, on the left side of the court, as you enter through the street-gate; the first floor rooms on the first stair on that side. The rooms consist at present of a small study, with two windows looking into the court, and a very small bed-room adjoining. They do not seem to have been altered at all since Milton's time." As soon as he had settled himself in his apart- ments, which he retained until he quitted Cam- bridge, he selected his tutor, William Chap- pell, and then strolled out to see the town. 41 THE LIFE AND TIMES At that time tlie population of Cambridge was between seven and eight thousand. The distinction between "town" and "gown" had grown up long prior to that age, and while the town was governed by a mayor, aldermen, and a common council, the University was control- led by its own statutes, which were enforced by the collegiate authorities. The University was also represented in Parliament by two mem- bers returned by itself.* At the time of Milton's matriculation, Cam- bridge had fallen into man}^ disorders and deviations from the old academic discipline, ecclesiastical and other, arising on the one hand from the invasion of Puritan opinions, which prevailed to an extent which alarmed the zealous churchmen resident there, and on the other hand from "debauched and atheisti- cal" principles, and that "nicknaming and scoffing at religion and the power of godliness," which serious men thought "strange in a Uni- versity of the reformed church." Indeed the selfsame conflict between rot- ten formalism and scoffing infidelity on one * Masson's Life of Milton, p. 79. OF JOHN MILTON. 45 side, and earnest, living, and sincere devotion on the other, which ere long lighted the flames of civil war throughout Great Britain, seems to have already commenced at the University when Milton entered it. In Christ College the order was ver}^ good. Its heads and seniors were puritanically inclined, and they imparted to the undergraduates something of their own zeal and piety. Still it is very certain that Milton always entertained a poor opinion of the University curriculum, or course of study. He was at the very outset disgusted by the superficial educational system, and the babel of controversy. In speaking, long afterwards, of boys who went up to the colleges for educa- tion, he says, "Their honest and ingenuous natures coming to the University to feed them- selves with good and solid learning, are there unfortunately fed with nothing else but the scragged and thoru}^ lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry. They are sent home again with such a scholastic bur in their throats as hath stopped and hindered all true and gen- erous philosophy from entering, cracked their voices for ever with metaphysical gargarisms; 46 THE LIFE AND TIMES bath made them admire a sort of formal, out- side men, prelatically addicted, whose unchas- tened and overwrought minds were never yet initiated, nor subdued under the law of UKJial or religious virtue, which two are the greatest and best points of learning ; but either slightly trained up in a sort of hypocritical and hack- ney course of literature to get their living by, or else fondly overstudied in useless controver- sies, except those which they use with all the specious subtlety they arc able, to defend their prelatical Sparta." In a letter to his old friend and tutor Alexander Gill, he speaks again of the super- ficial and smattering course of learning pursued at the University, and of the manner in which the clergy engaged with raw and untutored judgments in the explanation of theological tenets, patching together a sermon with pilfer- ed scraps, without any acquaintance with criticism or philosophy. As might have been expected, with these views Milton's tarry at Cambridge was not invariably })leasant and agreeable. Himself, though but a boy in years — he was then but OF JOHN MILTON. 47 two months turned of sixteen — marvellously and accurately learned, familiar with the French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew tongues, he saw easily beneath the pompous surface- knowledge of the college "Dons." In familiar- ity with the current English literature of the day, and with those authors who preceded him, the fossil professors were infinitely be- hind their strange and intractable pupil. In the beginning, when they perceived his evident contempt for their time-honored and inflexible methods, they treated him harshly, as a presumptuous and conceited upstart. But in the end they learned to appreciate and ad- mire his genius. Milton was always frank and free in the expression of his opinions, and as he bruited his educational notions abroad, the university authorities set themselves to crush the heresy. He was, in consequence, beset at this time by many vexations. Among other troubles was his famous quarrel with his tutor, William Chappell. Dr. Johnson, a Tory and a high-church- man, and therefore naturally inimical to Mil- ton's opinions, in his life of the poet, is fre- 48 THE LIFE AND TIMES quently biased bj' his prejiuliccs. This pre- vents that fairness of statement and charity of judgment which are so becoming in a biog- rapher. Misled by this infirmity, he often seeks occasion for fault-finding where in reality none exists. Of this nature is his charge that Mil- ton obtained no fellowship in the university, and that he was publicly flogged while there for infractions of discipline. This assertion, though it has never created much wonder, has stirred more recent biographers to a careful investigation of the facts. The result of these inquiries has gone to show that there was no truth whatever in the charge of public flog- ging, the rumor of which Milton himself ear- nestl}^ denied but a few years after he quitted the University, when the facts must have been known to many persons, and when, surrounded as he then was by enemies, if such an allega- tion could have been made good, the ready pens of a score of adversaries would have attested it. Yet his denial was never ques- tioned in his age, but it was reserved for the pen of Dr. Johnson to revive the exploded slander, and to insult tlie memory of John OF JOHN MILTON. 49 Milton b}-^ the expression of an affected con- cern at its trnth. There is, however, no question that Milton had some difficulty with William Chappell, and that in consequence he changed his tutor. His life in those days, while under the frown of the college authorities, was probably far from pleasant. He found consolation how- ever in his literary pursuits, and in his cor- respondence. He addressed at this period several letters to Alexander Gill ; to his old preceptor Thomas Young at Hamburg, in one of which he bewailed that worthy's exile, and predicted his speedy return, since the days were coming when England would need all such sons ; and to Charles Deodati. Deodati had been Milton's most intimate friend at St. Paul's school. The familj^ was of Italian extraction, and had originally come from Lucca on account of its Protestant princi- ples. Of two brothers born in G-eneva, Gio- vanni, the 3^ounger, remained there, where he rose to be professor in the Universit}^ of Ge- neva, and became an eminent theologian of the Reformation. The other brother, Theodore, 60 THE LIFE AND TIMES came over to England in early life, adopted the medical profession, and attained considera- ble reputation ; so that in 1609 he had a house in Brentford, and was physician to Henry, Prince of Wales, and Elizabeth, afterwards Queen of Bohemia. Charles, Milton's friend, was born about the year 1608, and was therefore near the same age as his p;reat playfellow. Young D^odati was a bo}' of more than ordi- nary ability, and in earnest devotion to study and purity of life, was a proper mate for Mil- ton. He went to Oxford in 1621-2 ; but thdr old intimacy was still kept up. Milton's let- ters to this valued friend, usually written in the Latin or Italian languages, and dated from Cambridge, are ver}' beautiful. They relate his studies, his accomplishments, his feelings, his amusements, giving an inside view of the man. They show him to have excelled as much in the amiable virtues as he did in the controversial and rhetorical ones. It was during Milton's first j'ear at Cam- bridge that the plague made its appearance, the tradition of whose horrors still lingers in English history. This scourge stalked through OF JOHN MILTON. 51 the island, decimating the population of the larger towns. It carried off over thirtj'-five thousand people in London, where it first rev- elled in its ghastly carnival. The pestilence did not break out in Cambridge, but it raged in many of the surrounding viUages, and caused such a panic at the Universitj^ as served to disturb the ordinary quiet routine, and send many of the collegians home. Milton passed the time with his family. In this same year, 1625, king James died, not much regretted by any part}^, and was succeeded by Charles Stuart, then in his twen- ty-tifth year. The death of the old and the succession of the new king caused considerable commotion at the Universit}^ It was difficult for the "Dons" and scholars, accustomed as they had long been to the formula '' Jacohwn Regwn^^ in their prayers and graces at meat, to bring their mouths all at once round to " Carolum Regum^^ instead. Meade, one of Milton's fellow-students, tells of one poor bach- elor who was so bent on remembering that " t7aco5z4fe "denied not but many of them had been good men, though not infallible, nor above all human frailties," he yet "affirmed that, though at the beginning they had renounced the Pojpe, yet they had hugged the Popedom, and shared the authority among themselves; 112 THE LIFE AND TIMES by their six bloody articles persecuting the Protestants no slacker than the Pope would have done." In contemplating the glorious event of the Reformation, he rises into the highest elo- quence: "How the bright and glorious Ref- ormation, by divine power, shone through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti- christian tyranny ; methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odor imbue his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible brought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it; the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues; princes and cit- ies trooping apace to the new-erected banner of salvation ; the martyrs, with the irresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of dark- ness, and scorning the iiery rage of the old red dragon." After tracing with singular acumen the influence of prelacy, and displaying the anti- liberal character of its politics, he turns to the OF JOHN MILTON. 113 English and Scotch Puritans of his time, united by a " solemn league and covenant" to pursue the contest for liberty in church and state, and thus apostrophizes them: "Go on both, hand in hand, Oh nations never to be disunited. Be the praise and heroic song of all posterity. Merit this ; but seek only virtue, not to extend vour limits; for what need you win a fading^ triumphant laurel out of the tears of wretched men, but to settle the pure worship of God in his church, and justice in the state ? Then shall the hardest difficulties smootl! out them- selves before you ; envy shall sink to hell ; craft and malice be confounded, whether it be homebred mischief or outlandish cunning; yea, other nations wall then covet to serve you ; fo*.' lordship and victory are but the passes of justice and virtue. Commit securely to true wisdom the vanquishing and unusing of craft and subtlety, which are but her two renegades. Join 3^our invincible might to do worth}^ and godlike deeds; and then he that wishes to break your union, a cleaving curse be his inheritance to all generations." In 1641, the same year in which Milton's 114 THE LIFE AND TIMES "Treatise on the Reformation" appeared, a number of Presbyterian ministers published, under the title of "Smectj^iinus,''* consisting of the initial letters of their names, a treatise against prelac}^ This treatise provoked indig- nant replies, which again drew from Milton three several reviews, in one of which, Toland saj's, "Milton shows the insufficiency, incon- veniency, and impiety " of attempting to estab- lish any part of Christianit}" from patristical lore, "and blames those persons who cannot think any doubt resolved or any doctrine confirmed unless they run to that undigested heap and frj' of authors which tliey call an- tiquity." ' Whatsoever either time or the blind hand of chance,' he says, ' has drawn down to this present, in her huge drag-net, wheth- er fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpick- ed, unchosen, these are the fathers.' " And so he chides these writers "for divulging use- less treatises, stuffed with the specious names of Ignatius and Polycarpus, with fragments of old martyrologies and legends, to distract * This was a quarto work, wTitten by Stephen ^Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurs- tow. OF JOHN MILTON. 115 and stagger the multitude of credulous read- ers." To one of those writers who insinuated that Milton's habit of early rising was for sensual pursuits, he made this response: "My morn- ing haunts are where the}' should be, at home ; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring: in winter, often before any bell awakens men to labor or devotion; in summer, as apt as the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read till the atten- tion is weary, or the memory have its full fraught. Then with useful and generous labor preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render a lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience of the mind for the cause of relig- ion and our country's liberty, 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 means, together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem, either of what I was or what I 116 THE LIFE AND TIMES might be, (which let env}'' call pride,) and last- ly, a burning modest}^ all uniting their natu- ral aid together, kept nie still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must l)lunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitution. "If I should tell you what I learnt of chas- tity 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, intoxicating potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about — and if I were to tell you how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of the divine generation, know- ledge and virtue, with such abstracted sublim- ities as these, it micrht be worth vour listen- ing, readers." It will be observed that Milton's objections to the assumptions of his opponents were of a twofold nature: objections founded upon the dissenting arguments of the sufficiency of the Scriptures alone, and the right of private judg- ment, rejecting the authorit}' of the creeds of OF JOHN MILTON. 117 the first four general councils ; and objections founded on an earnest opposition to the clear- ly antichristian principle, then a cardinal point in the prelatical belief, of the right of the civil magistrate to adopt rites and ceremo- nies, and enforce them by civil pains and pen- alties upon the observance of those whose con- sciences would not allow them to obey any thing in religion but what was taught them in the oracles of God. One of Milton's biographers* remarks very truly, that though the blunt and caustic style of Milton's writings, and the gorgeous elo- quence with which he attacked the bishops, must have been highly diverting to those Pu- ritans both in church and state who had begun to throw off their prelatical chains, yet the sentiments would be often very far from meet- ing their approval ; because, though the Puri- tans were opposed to episcopacy, yet they had no objection to the pnnciple of an establish- ment, nor to what was, above all, exposed and objected to by Milton, the right of the estab- lished sect to withhold toleration, and to pun- * Ivimey, p. 50. 118 THE LIFE AND TIMES ish with fines and imprisonment, jqs, even with death, those who would not submit their consciences to the dictation of the magistrate. In these respects the Puritans of that day were no whit in advance of the prelates, as they proved conclusively upon coming into power. They disliked not the princijyle of in- tolerance, but intolerance as applied to their own tenets. Milton stands out from those times as the only political writer whose Christianity and statesmanship were broad and generous enough to enable him to appreciate the inestimable value of unfettered thought, and~ to inscribe openly upon his phylactery the golden truth of religious toleration. Upon first entering the arena of controver- S}', Milton's modesty led him to say, "I was not disposed to this manner of writing, where- in knowing myself inferior to m3'self, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account it, but of ray left hand.'"'^ But posterity- has reversed his * Introduction to second volume of ' • Reasons of Church Gov- ernment." OF JOHN MILTON. 119 verdict, and sincerely thanks him lor his po- lemical works, not because they arc always fair, or always just, or always right, but be- cause, honestly meant, they abound in noble thoughts magnificently expressed, and because their tendency is towards truth and liberty. 120 THE LIFE AND TIMES CHAPTER YIII. Upon the outbreak of hostilities, the Par- liament took the reins of government in their own hands, and proceeded to the correction of man}^ abuses. One of their first steps was, to exclude the bishops from their seats in the upper House. Soon after, in 1643, the Lords and Commons signed together the "Solemn League and Covenant " which bound England and Scotland to the extirpation of Poper}^ and Prelacy.* Considering how greatly Milton's writings had contributed towards that consummation, it must have afforded him undisguised jo}^ because with his sentiments, as expressed in his several treatises against the prelates, he considered, as the Parliament appears to have done, tliat popcrj^ and prelacy were then identical, or at least so closely united that the death of one insured the burial of the other. He considered that the overthrow of • Hume's History of England, Vol. VII., p. 470. OF JOHN MILTON. 121 prelacy would assimilate the Episcopacy to the simpler, and as he Ihought, the more apos- tolic model of the reformed churches in other countries — introducing their exactness of dis- cipline, as they already held their puritj' of doctrine.* The rule of the Parliament, from the open- ing battle of the civil war at Edge-hill in 1642, up to the year 1644, had been checkered by alternate victory and defeat; still, upon the whole, the Puritans had gained, and their rule continued firm. In 1644 there occurred an event which proved Milton to be the friend of impartial liberty, not of a clique, and as ready to lash the inconsistencies of his political associates as he had been to expose the sophistries of the oppressive prelates. Unlike another famous character in English history, he would never consent " to give up to jjarty what was meant for mankind." "No pent-up XJtica confined his powers." When he beheld the Puritans, who, while smarting under the intolerant license laws of * mtford's Life of Milton, p. 33. UUton. 6 122 THE LIFE AND TIMES the prelates, had been the clamorous friends of the freedom of the press, themselves, upon their assumption of power, reenacting those very statutes restricting printing, the glaring inconsistency of these apostate patriots kin- dled his scornful indignation, and called forth an argument which the voices of the most op- posite critics have, with singular unanimity, described as one of the most masterly and elo- quent compositions ever originated by the wit of man. Milton called his argument, " Are- OPAGITICA;'^ or, An Oration to the Parliament of England for the Liberty of Unlicensed Print- tng. From the establishment of printing in Eng- land, the business had been constantly inter- fered with by the government, which in this respect imitated the inquisitorial inspections of the Yatican. In the reign of Philip and Mary an attempt was made to consolidate the printing trade, and the incorporation of the "Stationers' Company of London" was finally effected in 1557. By the act of incorporation, the exclusive privilege of printing "and pub- * From the Greek Xpemrayvc, an ancient Athenian high court. OF JOHN MILTON. 123 lishing in the English domains was couferred upon the London company and its successors b}^ regular apprenticeship. The object of the government in creating this gigantic monopoly, the centralization of literature in one spot, where it could be under the immediate eye of the court, was thus gained. The company could lawfully search for and seize any books printed against its privilege, and such illegal printing was punishable by fine and imprison- ment. When Elizabeth assumed the crown, so stood the law ; but that the determination of what should be published might not be wholly at the discretion of the Stationers' Company, she decreed by the fifty-first of the Injunctions concerning Religion, promulgated in 1559, that no book, school-books and recognized classics excepted, should be published in any language in her domains henceforward, but with the pre- vious license of the queen or six of her privy counsellors, or by the chancellors of the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, or by the archbishops of Canterbury and York, or by the bishop of London, or by the bishop 124 THE LIFE AND TIMES being ordinary and the archdeacon of the place of publication. The privilege which the universities natu- rally claimed as seats of learning to print at their option, had caused a long dispute between themselves and the London company, which was finally decided b}^ a Star Chamber decree. It was settled that, in addition to the printing- presses under the control of the stationers of the metropolis, there might be one press at each university ; the owners of these however, to have but one apprentice at a time, and to employ London journeymen when they re- quired extra service.* These laws, so capable of being made the engine of intolerable oppression, had been so used by Archbishop Laud and his satellites ; and that too at a time when it was felt as a pe- culiar hardship. That was a period of remark- able intellectual activity. " Every man,'" says Clarendon, "had written or expected to write a book ;" and Coleridge has assured us that the store of pamphlets left us by the age of Milton is as rich in thought and as multitudinous in *Cooper's Annals (>f Cnmbridge. Vol. II. , p. 424. OF JOHN MILTON. 126 number as any issued fi'om the press in later days. People then complained of the plethora of books, precisel}' as they do now. "In this scribbling age," says Burton in the preface to his ''Anatomy of Melancholy,''^ "the number of books is without number. What a company of poets hath this year brought out ; as Pliny complains to Sosius Senecio. What a cat- alogue of new books all this year, all this age, I say, have our Franklin marts, our do- mestic marts, brought out. Who can read them? We are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our lingers with turn- ing." Of course at such a time the indispensable imprimatur of the licensers came to be regarded by writers as a nuisance ; and by the Puritans it was especially objected to, because they often could not secure for their tracts the necessary license, while the prelates with the press for a fulcrum turned their tenets upside down. Yet, not taught toleration by their own suffering, they had no sooner deposed the bishops than they appointed new licensers, and continued 126 THE LIFE AND TIMES the Avliolc tyrannical system under the new dispensation. It was against the principle of the license code that Milton, in the '' Areopagitica,''^ trained his intellectual battery, and fired that tremen- dous broadside which reverberated then, and still reverberates throughout the world. The '' Areopagitica^^ is opened with master- ly art ; in conciliatory finesse, the exordium equals any thing in Greek or Eoman oratory. " Truth is armed, by reason and by fancy, with weapons which are effective by their weight and edge, while the}' dazzle us by their bright- ness." Milton's arguments, which are individ- uall}' strong, derive additional force from their mutual support and admirable arrangement; so that at the climax they compel with imperi- ous power unhesitating conviction. Showing at the outset that fetters for the press were first contrived by the papal tyran- ny,''' and perfected by the Spanish inquisition. * Dr. Syminons, in his Life of Hilton, appends this note to his clescription of the " Areopagitica :" "The turbulent and profligate Sextus IV., whose enormities were exceeded only by those of Alex- ander VI., was the first who placed the press under the control of a stiite inquisitor. He died in 1484, after having disgraced the OF JOHN MILTON. 127 he next proceeds to prove that these gags are injurious to civil progress and religious truth. He affirms that the circulation of flagitious writings cannot be restrained by shackling the press ; while the suspicion which falls upon works, suppressed often by the ignorance of licensers, or by their spite, is an insult to authors, and a discouragement to the learned. Even admitting that the entire control of the press could be attained, as it certainly never has been, still no good would result to morals, as the avenues of corrupt communication would be alwaj^s numerous ; while, after all, not igno- rance of vice, but its rejection, constitutes virtue. " Adam's doom seems to have been that of knowing good hj evil. A fugitive and cloister- ed virtue is not to be praised — a virtue unex- ercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversar}^, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Milton scouts the idea of any one class un- dertaking to decide for mankind what truth is. Eoman see and disturbed Italy during thirteen years. This is not specified by Milton, but is the fact." 128 THE LIFE AND TIMES Opinion is not always truth ; it is truth filtered through the mood, the disposition, the educa- tion, the stand-point of the spectator. While the bishops affirmed that orthodoxy was their 'doxy, the Dissenters were just as firmly per- suaded that the orthodox religion dwelt with them; while the Pope fulminated his bulls of excommunication against them both, arrogating to the Roman see the pure unquestionable or- thodox faith. In that and kindred controver- sies it was Milton's belief that unlicensed, un- restricted printing would be a grand helper, and no hinderance to the eternal truth. To the jealousy of a government, or the bigotry of a church, demanding an enslaved press, he replies, that "a state governed by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a church built upon the rock of f\iith and true know- ledge, cannot be so pusillanimous" as to dread the utmost liberty of criticism. Yet it was not the licentiousness of the press for which Milton pleaded. He was willing that it should be as free as the air, or the light of heaven, to pour its good and evil alike into the world ; but he would hold the writers to a OF JOHN MILTON. 129 proper responsibility to the laws, not to vomit slander through the press, nor to infringe the fundamental precepts of morals and good order. That is, publishers were not to be allowed to violate the innocent peace of society, or of in- dividuals ; to permit that were not liberty, but flagitious licentiousness. "I deny not," says the great champion of regulated liberty, "but that it is of great con- cernment to the church and commonwealth to have a vigilant qjq how hooks bemean them- selves as well as men ; and therefore to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors ; for books are not absolutel}^ dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the honest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a reasonable 6* 130 THE LIFE AND TIMES creature, God's image ; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eve. Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious lifcblood of a master-spirit em- balmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'T is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men — how we spill that seasoned life of man pfeserved and stored up in books ; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole im- pression, a kind of massacre, whereof the exe- cution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that etherial and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, and slays an immor- tality rather than a life." Milton did not fear the most convulsing agitation : he saw, in what some thought chaos, nothing but an unchained people "casting off OF JOHN MILTON. 131 the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, wax- ing young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, and destined to become great and honorable in these latter days." Here occurs this burst of sublime and unrivalled eloquence "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself, like the strong- man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty 3'outh, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purging and unsealing her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole brood of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amaz- ed at what she means." What he says concerning the inconsisten- cy of the Parliament in its treatment of the license question, is keen and just: "Who can- not discern the fineness of this politic drift, and who are its contrivers ? that while the bishops were to be baited down, then all presses might be open: it was the people's birthright and privilege in time of Parliament; 132 THE LIFE AND TIMES it was the breaking forth of light. But now, the bishops abrogated and voided out of the church, as if our reformation sought no more but to make room for others into their seats under another name, the episcopal arts begin to bud again; the cruse of truth must run no more oil ; liberty of printing must be inthrall- ed under a prelatical commission of twenty ;* the privilege of the people nullified, and which is worse, the freedom of learning must groan again, and to her old fetters."t This entire "Plea" of Milton's is a model of style, impressive dignity, and persuasive eloquence. la sublimity of thought and ele- vation of sentiment, it is unique and unrivalled in English letters. Some of the sentences are stiff with splendor, while its frequent figura- tiveness renders it what Burke fitly calls it, "the most magnificent of prose poems." Notwithstanding its splendor, cogency, and unanswerable logic, the Parliament turned a deaf ear to Milton's address, and remained in- exorably determined to preserve the license • In allusion to a then recent act of Parliament, placing the license under charge of such a commission. \ Works, Vol. L, p. 315. OF JOHN MILTON. 133 gags, and to muzzle the press. Nor was it until the year 1694 that the license was defi- nitely abolished, and the press, shaking off its locks and shackles, became really free in Eng- land.* * Blackstoue's Commentaries, 11th ed., Vol. IV., p. 152. 134 THE LIFE AND TIMES CHAPTER IX. At Whitsuntide, iu 1643, he being then thirty-five years of age, Milton married Mar}-, a daughter of Mr. Powell, a justice of the peace in Oxfordshire, and a gentleman of property and position. After spending the honeymoon among his bride's relatives, Milton brought her to town with him, in the expectation of living comfortably and happily with her. His bright hopes were, however, speedily blasted, and his wife held to his lips a goblet of morti- fication which he was obliged to drain to the very dregs. Many circumstances combined to render this match exceedingly unequal and ill-advis- ed; it certainly proves that the wisest of men are at times the most foolish. The Powells were stanchly cavalier in their politics; Miss Powell had been reared in the gay, frivolous circles of the "love-locked" gentry of that loose epoch, was used to much company, mer- riment, and dancing, held her austere hus- OF JOHN MILTON. 135 band's democratic principles in utter contempt, and was not fitted either by nature or training to sympatliize with his magnificent projects, and studious, philosophical pursuits. To a lady thus bred, nothing could be more odiously uninviting than the solitary study of a recluse scholar, where no company whose tastes Avere similar to hers ever came, where spare diet and a house full of pupils constantly galled one who had been spoiled, petted, and lapped in luxury. Sighing for the old life of mirth and joviality, she urged Mil- ton, after passing some few weeks with him in London, to permit her to visit her friends in Oxfordshire for a while; with which request her husband complied, only stipulating that she should return to him at Michaelmas. This visit was in fact only a pretence for conjugal desertion.* Philips, Milton's nephew, at the time a pupil in his uncle's house, tells us that her relations "being generg,lly addicted to the cavalier party, and some of them possi- bly engaged in the king's service, (who by this time had his head-quarters at Oxford, and was * Todd's Life of Milton, p. 48. 136 THE LIFE AND TIMES in some prospect of success,) they began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion; and thought it would be a blot in their escutcheon, whenever that court should come to flourish again." However this may be, certain it is that she did not make her appearance at the appointed time, and that she yielded no obedience to her husband's repeated requests that she should resume her place at his side. " After receiv- ing several of his letters without sending him any answer," saj^s Tolland, " she did at length positively refuse to come, dismissing his 'mes- senger with contempt." It may easily be imagined what the result of such keenly insulting conduct would be upon a man of John Milton's high, proud, and hon- orable spirit. Exasperated beyond measure, he resolved to repudiate his wife ; and in de- fence of this, resolution, he published his four celebrated treatises on divorce, the two first in 1644, the others in 1645. The first pamphlet on this subject was called the ''Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" OF JOHN MILTON. 137 and was dedicated to the Parliament and the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. This provoked much comment ; and several answers to it being penned by his opponents, Milton shortly after, in order to show that he did not stand alone in his opinion, published his sec- ond tract, " The judgment of the Famous Re- former Martin Bucer^ Touching Divorce,^'' in which he proved that that worthy exactly agreed with him. In response to an elaborate attack upon his theory in 1645, Milton published another tract in its defence: ^^ Tetrarchordon; or, depositions ujjoji the Four Chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage or JSfidlities in Marriage^ Some months later, being provoked thereto by continued denunciation and misrepresentation, he issued the " Colasterion" in which he closed the controversy. It is not within the purview of this Life to speak at any length or with any oracularness upon the momentous question of divorce. Per- haps however it is but fair to state that Mil- ton's design in the pamphlet he wrote upon the subject was, to show that there may be 138 THE LIFE AND TIMES other and sufficient reasons for divorce besides adulter}', and that to i)rohibit any sort of divorce but such as are accepted by Moses is unjust, and against the reason of the law. These innovations brought upon Milton's head a storm of ridicule and denunciation at the time. The wits of the court and the thun- ders of the pulpit united their terrors to affright and daunt him. He was even summoned be- fore the bar of the House of Lords ; but he was quickly dismissed, and all efforts to excite the Lords and Commons of the Parliament against him signally failed. Perhaps they foresaw the time when they should require him to wield his might}" pen in their defence, and thus were cautious not to treat with harshness one be- neath the fegis of whose glittering rhetoric they might be driven to hide. Whether the Parliament accepted his the- ories or not, his writings gave birth to a sect called Miltonists, who did indorse him. Dr. Symmons, a clergj-man of the Estab- lished church in England, and one of Milton's ablest biographers, thinks that he "has made out a strong case, and fights with arguments OF JOHN MILTON. 130 not easily to be repelled."* And Mr. Godwin says, "The books on divorce are written with the most entire knowledge of the snbject, and with a clearness and strength of argnment that it would be difficult to excel." Selden also, one of the profoundest lawyers in English jurispru- dence, fully indorsed Milton's principles, writ- ing his ''Uxor Hebraica^^ on that side of the question; while in America a number of the states have enacted analogous precepts into law. This proves that those critics who charge that Milton wrote the divorce pamphlets has- tily and ignorantly, in order to vent his spite, falsify the record. The pamphlets breathe, in the main, making fair deductions on account of the heated controversial period in which they were written — an age when polemical writers were far from nice in their choice and bestowal of epithets — a pure and Chris- tian spirit, and show their author's desire and effort to lean prayerfully and unhesitatingly upon the Scriptures. If he erred, it was not intentionally, or because he did not seek the truth. * Symmons' Life of Milton, p. 202. 140 THE LIFE AND TIMES The lesson which may safely be drawn from this unhappy episode in Milton's life is, that marriage should be based upon something better than mere fancy, upon which Milton s choice seems onh' to have rested; and that persons should not "marry in haste," if they do not wish " to repent at leisure.'' About this time Milton's little academy was reinforced by the arrival of several new pupils whom he had consented to receive into his family. His father also, upon the cnpture of Reading by the Earl of Essex in 1643, left his son Christopher, with whom he had been residing in that town, and came to form part of the establishment in Aldersgate- street. In conformity with his tenets on the sub- ject of divorce, and to exhibit his conscious- ness of freedom, Milton, in 1644, began to address a beautiful and accomplished young lady, a daughter of a Mr. Davis, with a view to matrimony. It has been asserted somewhat loosely, that Miss Davis was averse to the un- ion ; but if she entertained any objections, they were overcome, and the match would have or JOHN MILTON. 141 taken place but for the occurrence of a some- what remarkable circumstance. The desperate situation of the king's cause in 1644, caused by the utter rout of the royal array at Naseby, made the family of Milton's wife reluctantly sensible of the folly of their conduct in alienating a man so powerful with the Parliament, and selfishly anxious to pro- pitiate his resentment. They foresaw that his active countenance would soon be necessary for their protection, and possibly for their ac- tual subsistence. "With no resemblance to the elevated equanimity of the man who had honored them with his alliance, they rose or fell, like the mob of their species, with the flow or the ebb of fortune, and were insolent or abject as their unstable power visited or de- serted them." They therefore determined to effect a reconciliation between Milton and his wife. "Their plan," says Dr. Symmons, "was conceived and executed with successful inge- nuity." When on a visit to a relative in the lane of St. Martin's-le-grand, he was surprised to see his wife come from another room and 142 THE LIFE AND TIMES bog forgiveness on her knees. Fenton re- marks,* " It is not to be doubted but an inter- view of that nature, so little expected, must wonderfully affect him ; and perhaps the im- pression it made upon his imagination contrib- uted much to the painting of that pathetic scene in 'Paradise Lost,'' in which Eve address- es herself to Adam for pardon and peace. At the intercession of his friends who were pres- ent, after a short reluctance, he generously sacrificed all his resentment to her tears : "Soon liis heart relented Toward her, his Ufe so hxte, and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress." Such was Milton's generous and Christian spirit, that, banishing all remembrance of his wife's ill-conduct, and also of her family's prov- ocation, he received them all into his own house, where he freely entertained and pro- tected them until their affairs were accommo- dated by his interest with the victorious Puri- tans. His wife continued to reside with him happily and affectionately until her death some years later. * Li the preface to his edition of ''Paradise Lost," first pub- lished in London, in 1725. OF JOHN MILTON. . U3 At the time of Milton's reconciliation with his wife, the enlargement of his family had obliged him to change his residence to a more commodious mansion in Barbican, whither he now transported his household. " When it is considered that Milton cheer- fully opened his doors to those who had treat- ed him with indignity and breach of faith: to a father who, according to the poet's nuncupative will, never paid him the promised marriage portion of a thousand pounds ; and to a mother who, according to Wood, had encouraged the daughter in her perverseness, we cannot but accede to Mr. Hayley's conclusion, that the records of private life exhibit not a more mag- nanimous example of forgiveness and benefi- cence.""^' Notwithstanding these domestic embarrass- ments, and the engrossing interest of the civil war, then rising to its triumphant climax, Mil- ton did not permit his attention to be wholl} diverted from other important considerations. He published during this period, in addition to the "Plea for Unlicensed Printing," and the ♦ Todd's Life of Milton, p. 58. 144 THE LIFE AND TIMES pamphlets on divorce, his elaborate " Treatise on Education" and several sonnets. His lei- sure hours he filled u}) pleasantl}^ either in visiting his friends, and especially one lady, a daughter oi" the Earl of Marlborough, who was possessed of rare talents, and to whom, as to her husband. Captain Hobson, an accom- plished gentleman, his compan}'' was peculiar- ly acceptable; or in collecting and correcting his early poems, both Latin and English, an edition of which was first published under the auspices of Humphrey Moseley, the general publisher of the poets of that epoch, in 1645. Mosely says, in his "Address to the Read- er," "The author's more peculiar excellence in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers, or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age, bv brino-ino; into the lio-ht as true a birth as the muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote ; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated, as sweetly excelled." Moseley's discernment did indeed "deserve OF JOHN MILTON. 145 of the age," and though these poems did not win much applause on their first appearance, it is only another proof that great works in liter- ature are seldom appreciated b}' the genera- tion which witnesses their birth. Bunyan's immortal writings were long treated with the shabbiest neglect. In 1G47, Milton again removed his resi- dence, taking a smaller house in Holborn ; the Powells having left him, he no longer required so much room as was contained in the spa- cious Barbican dwelling. Philips tells us that "he is much mistaken, if there was not about this time a design of making him an adjutant- general in William Waller's array. But the new modelling of the army proved an obstruc- tion to the design." It was in this year that Milton's father died, ending happily and peacefully a long and useful life, whose declining days had been soothed by every attention possible to be paid him by an affectionate, grateful, and pious son. ]\Iilton still continued to instruct a few pupils; but for a number of months his busy pen had rest. U6 THE LIFE AND TIMES Milton's wife had, a year or two after the reconciliation, presented him with a daughter, whom he named Anne, after his sister. This child was born lame, or became so in early youth from some accident. In October of 1 648, his second daughter was born, receiving her mother's name, Mary. It was while residing in Ilolborn, in this quiet and domestic manner, that the Parlia- ment appointed Milton to the Latin secretary- ship of state. This at once changed his mode of life, and introduced him to the busiest scene of his checkered career. OF JOHN MILTON. 147 CHAPTER X. In order fulh' to comprehend the purpose and significance of Milton's state appointment, it will be necessary to cast a retrospective glance at the progress and scope of the civil war from that incipient stage up to which we have already traced it, to the unhappy and ghastly death of Charles upon the scaffold. The war, which, from the battle of Edge- hill, had somewhat dragged, success alternate- ly perching upon the eagles of the king and upon the Puritan standard, was in 1645 prose- cuted with new and Titanic energy, owing to the displacement of the honest but inefficient Parliamentary generals Essex and Fairfax, and the appointment of Oliver Cromwell to the supreme command of the Puritan array. From this period hope, which had twinkled in the political horizon, was quenched for the king. The cohorts of the Parliament, officered by the soldierly genius of Cromwell, one of the great- 148 THE LIFE AND TIMES est captains of all time, inarched forward to assured success, achieving a series of brilliant victories, which speedily gave the royal cause its coup de grace. The rout at Long Marston Moor in 1644 had sadly broken the spirit of the Cavaliers. The relentless and irresistible charge of Crom- well's "Ironsides" in the following year, at Naseby, completed the demoralization, and hopelessly scattered the adherents of the king. Charles, after a hazardous and checkered existence of several months from the fajal battle of Naseby, finally determined to throw himself upon the clemency of the Scotch Puri- tans; and he accordingly repaired, in 1646, to their camp before Newark. Though they received him with everj'' outward appearance of respect, the Scottish generals in reality made the monarch a captive, while they fell upon the consideration of the proper course to pursue towards him. The Parliament, immediately upon learn- ing the whereabouts of their runawa}' king, formally demanded his rendition to them by Scotland, on the ground that, though he was or JOHN MILTON: 149 certainly king both of Scotland and England, still, being in England, he was comprehended within the jurisdiction of that kingdom/^' After considerable discussion, not without having incurred the suspicion of bribery,f the Scots handed Charles over to the Parliament. By them he was conducted to Holmby House in Northamptonshire, where he resided in easy confinement until his seizure by the army sev- eral months later, when he was removed to Hampton Court. While the king was at Hampton, several events occurred which might have reseated him upon the throne, had he possessed the slightest political honesty or sagacity. The Puritans were at this crisis divided into two ecclesiastical parties — the "Presby- terians," a sect of Scotch extraction, and the " Independents," a new-born organization, but very powerful, and strongly opposed to the Presbyterian policy. The Presbyterians hav- ing gotten the Parliament under their control, proceeded to abridge both civil and religious liberty to an almost unprecedented extent, * Hume's ffist. of Eng., Vol. Vn., p. 75. f Iljic^-> P- 77. 150 THE LIFE AND TIMES going certainly much further in the direction of arbitrary dictation than the prelates them- selves had ventured to go. Milton had all along denounced their usurpations in the bold- est and most eloquently emphatic manner; and now behind him the Independents ranged themselves as the opponents of intolerance. They differed also from the Presbyterians in their notions of church government, approach- ing very closel}' to modern Congregational- ism. Cromwell, Ireton, and other noted leaders of the army were decided Independents. Dis- covering that the event might prove that they had lavished their blood only to substitute one tyranny for another, they instantl}^ decided to endeavor to win the king to proclaim amnesty, civil libert}^, and toleration, as the price of reinstatement in his royalties ;* or, that fail- ing, to crush Charles, oust the Parliament, and establish a free commonwealth upon the basis of justice and impartial liberty. After several interviews with their royal captive at Hampton Court, his haughtiness * Symmons' Life of Miltou, p. 213. OF JOHN MILTON. 161 and duplicity disgusted them ; and discovering by his secret correspondence with the queen that no reliance could be placed upon his good faith, they determined to unite with the Par- liament in bringing him to speedy trial and execution, perceiving that thus one, and the chief, obstacle to peace and liberty would be removed. Charles meantime had fled, upon the withdrawal of the protection of the army, from Hampton to the Isle of Wight, seeking there an asylum, but fiudinga close and rigor- ous prison. But the Parliament having obtained some inkling of the Independent plot to effect their displacement from power, in their turn en- deavored to negotiate a treaty with the king, which should place him at their head, and repossess him of a large part at least of what had been ravished from him by the victorious arms of the Commonwealth. But the monarch's fatal obstinacy and sin- gular opinion of his great importance, which could lead him to say, as Rushworth records, that it was in his power to turn the scale, and that that party must sink which he abandon- 152 THE LIFE AND TIMES cd — be the detlironed king of an annibilated faction! — led him to repel all overtures with the remark, "I shall see you glad ere long to accept more equal terras. You cannot do without me. You will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you.'"'^' While negotiations were still pending be- tween Parliament and the king, the array returned flushed with victory from several expeditions which had completely subdued all their enemies. Immediately, at Cromwell's suggestion, a remonstrance to the Parliament was drawn up, and signed by the council of general officers, demanding its dissolution, cotn- plaining of its usurpations, accusing it of trea- son to liberty and of riveting the old chains still tighter ; requiring a more equal represen- tation; and asserting that, though servants, they were entitled to represent these impor- tant points to their masters, who were them- selves no better than the servants or trustees of the people.f At the same time Cromwell's strategy insured the seizure of the king, and his strict confinement near the capital. • Rushworth. f Hume's Hist, of Eng., Vol. ^T;I., p. 127 OF JOHN MILTON. 153 Parliament met the menaced danger brave- ly, and declined to comply with the remon- strance of the army. Accordingly on the 6th of December, 1647-8, the military entered the chamber of the Parliament, forcibly ejected one hundred and sixt}^ members, constitnting the bulk of the Presbyterian strength, and leaving fifty or sixty Independents to carr}^ on the government: thus, to use the phrase of the time, "purged the house." Before this "rump" Parliament, Charles was summoned, tried, and sentenced to death ; which sentence was carried into execution on the 30th of Januar}", 1648-9. Thus perished this unhappy prince, whose obstinacy, duplic- ity, and despotism hurried him to an untime- ly and bloody grave. Upon the death of Charles, a representa- tive government, springing directly from the people, was organized upon the ruins of the throne. The "rump" Parliament, as that por- tion of the long Parliament which had survived the recent violence of the army soon came to be called, proceeded to proclaim the Common- wealth, and to lodge the executive power in a 154 THE LIFE AND TIMES council of thirty-eight members of the Com- mons, which received the name of "The Coun- cil of State." The men who composed this council were remarkably able, were endowed with singular executive talent, and speedily made the new Commonwealth command the respect, and to be even the terror of Europe. Resolved on adopting the I^atin tongue as its medium of intercourse with foreign nations, the Council decreed the appointment of a Latin secretary. The learning, talents, piety, repub- licanism, and brilliant rhetorical reputation of Milton, at once suggested him to the Council, and secured his appointment, without a suspi- cion on his part of being invited to enter into the service of the state. Though his tastes and inclination dictated the continuance of his more retired literary life and pursuits, yet Milton was a man who never permitted his predispositions to deter him from duty. Influenced by that patriotism which had alwaj^s been a passion with him, he cheerfully surrendered his private pursuits at its imperious command, that he might do his OF JOHN MILTON. 155 part towards strengthening and perfecting the nascent Commonwealth. That Milton did not regret the overthrow of the Presbj^terians, is proved conclusively by his own writings at the time, and especially by a satirical sonnet about the time of their downfall, in which he says, "New Freshyter is but old Priest writ large." During the transactions which preceded the death of the king and the establishment of the Commonwealth, Milton had remained quiet- ly domesticated at Holborn, a passive specta- tor of the tragedy about to be enacted ; his pen resting from controversy, and employed in the composition of a history of England, only six books of which were ever finished. These carry the story only to the battle of Hastings, leaving it at the most interesting period; but they are written accurately, mi- nutely, and often eloquently. Milton himself declared, at a subsequent period, when his party was firmly seated in power, when he had no reason to suppress the truth, but when, on the contrary, it would have redounded to his political advantage to have 150 THE LIFE AND TIMES asserted his active participation in the execu- tion of the king, that he had not been accesso- r}^ to the fate of Charles. "Neither did I write any thing," he says, "respecting the regal authorit}', till the king, proclaimed an enemy by the senate, and over- come in arras, was brought captive to his trial, and condemned to suffer death. When in- deed some of the Presbyterian leaders, lately tlie most iuveterately hostile to Charles, but now irritated by the prevalence of the Inde- pendents in the nation and the senate, and stung with resentment, not of the fact, but of their own want of power to commit it,' ex- claimed against the sentence of the Parliament upon the king, and raised what commotions they could b}^ daring to assert that the doc- trine of the Protestant divines, and of all the reformed churches was strong in reprobation of this severity to kings, then at length I con- ceived it to be my duty publicly to oppose so much obvious and palpable falsehood. Nei- ther did I then direct my argument personally against Charles, but, by the testimony of many of the most eminent divines, I proved what OF JOHN MILTON. 157 course of conduct might* lawfully be observed towards tyrants in general; and with the zeal almost of a preacher, I attacked the strange ignorance or the wonderful impudence of these men, who had lately amused us with the prom- ise of better things. This work was not pub- lished till after the death of the king ; and was written rather to tranquillize the minds of men, than to discuss any part of the question con- cerning Charles, a question the decision of which belonged to the magistrate, and not to me, and which has now received its final de- termination." From all this it should seem that the Pres- byterians, filled with bitterness on account of their exclusion from power, and more anxious for government and patronage than for right- eousness and the establishment of liberty, unit- ed their fierce clamors to swell the chorus of the king's partisans, raised upon the execution of the tyrant prince. Neale, the historian of the Puritans, makes this statement in reference to the course of the government at this troubled period : "The Parliament tried several methods to 158 THE LIFE AND TIMES reconcile the Presbyterians to the present administration. Persons were appointed to assure them of the protection of the govern- ment, and of the full enjoyment of their eccle- siastical preferments, according to law. When this would not do ... . the famous Mr. Milton was appointed to write for the government, who rallied the seditious preachers with his satirical pen in a most severe manner.'* The work to which Neale refers, and which Milton mentions in the extract just quoted, was first published in February, 1648-9, and was entitled, ''The Tenure of Kings and Mag- istrates'''' It is able, elaborate, and like every thing from the pen of its great author, singu- larly eloquent. His aim was to prove that "it is lawful, and hath been so through all ages, for an}' who have the power, to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due convic- tion, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied • From this statement it would seem that ililton had been h'lrtd to defend the government. This was not true. "NMiat he WTote was a freewill-offering to the tranquillization of the state. His duties as Latin secretary did not include any such arrange- ment OF JOHN MILTON. 159 to do it; and that tlie}^ who of late so much blame deposing, are the men that did it them- selves." In this same year, Milton's prolific pen pro- duced another pamphlet: ''Observations upon the Articles of Peace which the Earl of Ormond has concluded at Kilkenny, January 17th, 1648—9, in the King^s name, and hy His Authority, with the Popish Irish Rebels" Esteeming the new- formed Commonwealth to be threatened by the transactions of Ormond, who headed the disaffected Scotch Presbyterians, and who had entered into a treaty with the Irish partisans of Charles, a movement kept afoot for several months after the king's death, he wrote this tract to avert the menaced danger. 160 THE LIFE AND TTTVIES CHAPTER XI. At no period in history has Great Britain appeared to grander advantage than nnder the Commonwealth. Firm, able, yet tolerant in their domestic policy, inflexibly just and judi- cious in their dealings with foreign powers, the Council of State speedily inspired the utmost respect and awe in the breasts of the surround- ing nations. Not Elizabeth herself had exert- ed a more potent influence in continental poli- tics. In consequence of the proud position it acquired, the Commonwealth was enabled on several occasions to succor the oppressed of other lands, and even to dictate toleration and justice to foreign despots. The influence of England at this time was owing ver}' largelj^, without doubt, to the per- sonal character of several of the most prom- inent members of the Council of State.* Such * The foUowiug is a complete list of the names of the members of the Council during the first year or two of its establishment : President, John Bradshaw, Esq. ; Earls Denbigh, Mulgrave, Pem- broke, and Salisbury ; Lords Grey, Fairfax, and Lord Grey of or JOHN MILTON. 161 men as the young'cr Yaiie'^' and stont John Braclshawf could not fail to infuse their own Groby ; Esquires, John Lisle, Rolles, and Bulstrocle White- locke ; Lieutenant-general Cromwell ; Major-general Skippon ; Sirs, Gilbert Pickering, William Massum, James Harrington, Henry Vane, Jr., John Dan vers, William Arm ine, Henry Mildmay, and William Constable; Esquires, Alexander Popham, William Puresay, Isaac Pennington, Rowland Wilson, Edmund Liidlow, William Herringham, Eobert Wellop, Henry Martin, Anthony Stapely, John Hutchinson, Valentine Walton, Thomas Scot, Den- nis Bond, Luke Kobinson, John Jones, and Corneliiis Holland. * Milton -wi'ote the following sonnet on Sir Henry Vane the younger, a httle previous to his appointment to the Foreign Secre- taryship : "TO SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER. "Vane, young in years, but in sage council old, Than whom a better senator ne'er held The helm of Eome, when gowns not arms repelled The fierce Epirot and the Afran bold ; Whether to settle peace, or to unfold The drift of hollow states, hard to be spelled, Then to advise how war may, best upheld. Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold. In all her equipage : besides, to know Both spiritual power and civil, what each means. What severs each, thou 'st learned, which few have done: The bounds of either sword to thee we owe ; Therefore on thy firm hand religion leans In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." t Milton's opinion of John Bradshaw was evinced at about the same time that witnessed the production of the sonnet addi-essed to Vane. As what he says of that famous regicide may be of inter- est to some readers, it is subjoined : ' ' John Bradshaw — a name which, in every country where her authority is acknowledged, liberty herself has dedicated to immor- tal renown — was descended, as is generally known, of a noble fam- ily. The early part of his life he devoted to the study of the laws of his country ; and then becoming a profound lawyer, a most 162 THE LIFE AND TIMES talents and virtues into the governmental policy. eloquent advocate, a zealous asserter of freedom and the people's rights, he vras employed in the more important affairs of the state, and frequently discharged, vnth. unimpeachable integrity, the duties of a judge. ""WTien at length solicited by the Parliament to preside at tho trial of the king, he did not decline tliis most dangerous commis- sion ; for to the science of the law he had brought a liberal dispo- sition, a lofty spirit, sincere and uuoffensive manners ; and thus qualified, he supj^orted that great and beyond precedent fearful office, exposed to the threats and to the daggers of innumerable assassins, with so much firmness, so much weight of manner, such presence and dignity of mind, that he seemed to have been formed and appointed immediately by the Deity himself for the perform- ance of that deed, which the divine Providence had of old decreed to be accomplished in this nation ; and so far has he exceeded the glory of aU tyrannicides as it is more humane, more just, more noble to try and to pass legal sentence on a tyrant, than without trial to put him to death. ' ' ThoiTgh in other respects neither gloomy nor severe, but gen- tle and placid, he yet sust-^ins -with unfaltering dignity the charac- ter which he has borne, and laniformly consistent with himself, ho appears like a consul from whom the fasces are not to depart with the year ; so that not on the tribunal only, but throughout his life, you would regard him as sitting in judgment upon kings. "Unwearied and singly equal to a multitude in his labors for the public, in domestic life, to the utmost stretch of his powers, he is hospitable and splendid ; the steadiness and adherency of his friendship are not to be affected by the vicissitudes of fortune ; and instant and eager to acknowledge merit wherever it is discovered, he is munificent to reward it. The pious, the learned, the emi- nent in any wallc of genius, the soldier, the brave man, are either relieved by his wealth, if in distress, or if not indigent, are culti- vated by his attentions and cherished in his embrace. Delighted to dwell on the praises of others, he studiously suppresses his own. So great are his placability and readiness to forgive, that they are extended, as the experience of numbers hath ascei-tained, OF JOHN MILTON. 163 Still, without plucking a single laurel from the brows of these eminent patriots, it cannot be questioned that the transcendent genius of John Milton, the Latin Secretary, set to their action the seal of unrivalled dignit3^ His hand wrote out, and perhaps his voice not unfrequently suggested the orders of the Coun- cil. During his tenure of his Secretaryship, which only ended with the Restoration, the state papers of Great Britain are models of diplomatic composition and broad statesman- ship. No wonder that the continental states, long accustomed to the pedantry of James and the fluctuating diplomacy of Charles, mar- velled at the new regime. Nor can we feel to any among the enemies of himself and of the state who, fi-om a sense of theii- errors, have reverted to reason. If the cause of the oppressed is openly to be asserted ; if the influence and the strong ai-m of the powerful are to be controlled ; if the public ingratitude to any meritorious individual is to be arraigned, then will no de- ficiency of eloquence or of fortitude be seen in this great man ; then will the client possess in him an advocate and a friend siiited to all his wants and adequate to his highest expectations ; the cause indeed ■will be in the hands of a defender whom no threats can divert from the straight path, whom neither intimidation nor bribes can bend from the uprightness of duty, or for an instant deject from the conscious firmness of his countenance and the determined attitude of his mind." Such is the portraiture of one of the central figures of that time, as drawn by the pencil of another. 164 THE LIFE AND TIMES surprised that England learned to blush under the rotten morals and French policy of the Restoration, and longed once more to behold the brave days of the Comraonweallh, Avhen "the good old cause," as Milton loved to call it, gave purpose and emphasis to English diplomacy. Milton had onl}' been allowed sufficient time in which to acquaint himself with the routine of his office, before he was summoned by the government to the performance of a peculiar duty. Shortly after the death of the king, a book was published under the title of '' Eikon Biisil- ike; or, The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings," with Charles' name upon the title-page as the author. As we have seen, the death of the king had pro- duced a profound sensation. Busy dema- gogues,, ecclesiastical and lay, had exhausted the arts of cunning and impudent falsehood in order to stir the people to active sedition. The unwonted character of the king's punish- ment made even the liberal party anxious and troubled, while many held it sacrilegious. or JOHN MILTON. 165 With this feeling already abroad, it may easily be conceived how great was the effect of a book from the then dead hand of a prince whom many had come to consider a martyr and a saint, who spoke from a bloody grave, and who was represented as in constant intercourse through prayer with his Creator while in the flesh, urging before the Searcher of all hearts the integrity of his motives, and appealing from the cruelty and injustice of human tribu- nals to the awful bar of heavenly clemency and justice. Had a book of similar scope or purpose been published under the rule of the bishops, or under the Presbyterian administration, it would have been instantly suppressed. But the government was at this time made of sterner stuff. It determined to meet argu- ment with argument, book with book. Thus disposed to submit the merits of the controversy to the arbitrament of the pen, Milton was selected as the champion to whom the defence of the Commonwealth was to be intrusted. The result was the production of the ""Icon- 166 THE LIFE AND TIMES oclastes,^^ or Image -breaker, which was the peculiarly apposite name chosen by Milton as the title of his refutation. This pamphlet is one of tlie grandest and most annihilating of his controversial writings. "Pressing closely on its antagonist, and tracing him step by step, it either exposes the fallacy of his reasoning, or the falsehood of his assertions, or the hollow- ness of his professions, or the convenient spe- ciousness of his devotion. In argument and in style compressed and energetic, perspicuous and neat, it discovers a quickness which never misses an advantage, and a keenness of remark which carries an irresistible edge."* It has been justl}^ said, that no one not under the dominion of unthinking prejudice can read this book without enforced conviction. It shows conclusively that Charles, however blameless may have been his private life, be- trayed in his public conduct the violence of Eastern despotism and the shifting and equiv- ocating morality of Loyola and the Jesuits. The Iconoclastes thus commences: "To descant on the misfortunes of a person fallen * Symmons' Life of Milton, p. 274 OF JOHN MILTON. 167 from so liigli a dignity, who hath also paid his final debt to nature and his faults, is neither of itself a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discourse. Neither was it fond ambi- tion, nor the vanity to get a name, present or with posterity, by writing against a king. I never was so thirsty after fame, nor so desti- tute of other hopes and means better and more certain to attain it; for kings have gained glorious titles from their favorers by writ- ing against private men, as Henry VIII. did against Luther ; but no man ever gained much honor by writing against a king, as not usually meeting with that force of argument in such courtly antagonists, which to convince might add to his reputation.''' "Kings most commonly, though strong in legions, are but weak at argument; as they who ever have been accustomed from their cra- dle to use their will only as their right hand, their reason always as their left. "Whence, unexpectedly constrained to that kind of com- bat, they prove but weak and puny adversa- IVIilton's liauglity clisdain of his opponent is here superbly expressed. 1G8 THE LIFE AND TIMES ries. Nevertheless for tlicir sakes who, through custom, simplicit}', or want of better tcaeJiing, have not more seriously considered kings than in the gaudy name of majesty, and admire them and their doings as if they breathed not the same breath with other mortal men, I shall make no scruple to take up — for it seems to be the challenge of him and all his party — this gauntlet, though the king's, in behalf of libert}^ and the Commonwealth.'"-' Of course it is not possible, within the lim- its of this volume, to give the full personal expressions of John Milton. All that is in- tended is, to quote such passages as are reqnired to give a portraiture of the man, his views, and methods of expression. If what is here writ- ten shall stir any admiring soul to study care- fully and at length the written books of this pious, recondite, and altogether remarkable champion of religion and liberty, its object will have been fully achieved. The following paragraph from the powerful argument and brilliantly keen satire now under considera- tion, is spirited and eloquent. ♦ Prose Works, Vol. n., p. 391. OF JOHN MILTON. 169 "But what needed that? They knew his chiefest arms left him w^ere those only which the ancient Christians were w^ont to use against their persecutors, prayers and tears. Oh sacred reverence of God, respect and shame of men, whither were ye fled when these hypocrisies were uttered? Was the kingdom then at all that cost of blood to remove'*' from him none but prayers and tears? What were those thousands of blaspheming cavaliers about him whose mouths let fly oaths and curses by the volley; w^ere those the pra^^ers? And those carouses, drunk to the confusion of all things good and holy; did these minister the tears? Were they prayers and tears which were listed at York, mustered on Heworth Moor, and laid siege to Hull for the guard of his person? Were prayers and tears at so high a rate in Holland that nothing could purchase them but the crown jewels? Yet the}^ in Holland — such word was sent us — sold them for guns, carbines, mortar- pieces, cannons, and other deadly instruments of war ; which, when they came to York, were all, no doubt, by the merit * The old form of expression for move. 170 THE LIFE AND TIMES of some great saint, suddenly transformed into prayers and tears; and being divided into regiments and brigades, were the only arms which mischieved ns in all those battles and encounters. These were his chief arms, what- ever we must call them ; and yet such arms as they who fought for the Commonwealth have, by the help of better prayers, vanquished and brought to nothing.'"^ It is not singular that the impudent claim made through the king's book, that the Cava- liers were peculiarly saint-like in their relig- ious feelings, should have called forth the bit- ing raillery of one who, like Milton, knew the rotten and riotous character of that side, and the stern, unyielding piety of the other. Milton hinted his doubt on several occa- sions in the course of his pamphlet, as to the king's being the author of the "Soliloquies," referring to it once as the work of " the Jioiise- hold rhetorician " of Charles. And again he says, "These petty conceits on the high and secret judgment of God, besides the boldness of unwarrantable commenting, are so weak • Prose Works, Vol. 11., p. 4C9. OF JOHN MILTON 171 and shallow, and so like the quibbles of a court sermon, that we may safely reckon them either fetched from such a pattern, or that the hand of some household priest foisted them in.'"* Of course at the time these expressions had no influence upon the heated partisans of a book which served the interests and was sub- servient to the ends of the royal party. But j^ears later the "Soliloquies" were publicly and formally disavowed as the work of their father bj^ Charles II. and the Duke of York, who afterwards reigned as James II. " Mihon '' is said to have been written b}^ Dr. Gauden, one of Charles' most intimate friends, then Bishop of Salisbury, and it must be confessed that the evidence tends irresistibly to support that idea.* However this may be, Milton's pamphlet produced at the time a decided sensation. First published in 1649-50, it ran through several editions, and was esteemed by the gov- * Prose Works, Vol. II. p. 452. \ See Hume's remarks on this subject, Hist, of Eng., Vol. VTL Also SjTnmons' Life, pp. 284r-294. 172 THE LIFE AND TIMES eminent and the Independent party generally as an exhaustive and complete refutation of the sophistries of the '' Eikon Basilikzr About the time perhaps, or shortly after the publication of the '' Iconodastes,''^ Milton re- moved from Holborn to a lodging in the house of one Thompson, at Charing-cross, and after- wards to apartments in Scotland-yard. Here a third child, a son, was born to him, who died however in infancy, on the 16th of March, 1G50. In 1052 Milton once more changed his residence, securing this time a very handsome house in Petty France, opening upon St. James Park, and adjoining the mansion of Lord Scudamore. Here, without further change, he resided for eight years, or until the Restoration drove him to seek safety in flight and obscu- rity. Besides what property he had inherited from his father and the income derived from the sale of his writings, Milton was at this pe- riod in the receipt of an annual salary of two hundred pounds from the government as Latin Secretary, making in all a very comfortable and handsome income. OF JOHN MILTON. 173 CHAPTER XII. Great as Miltoirs English reputation now was, it had not yet become cosmopolitan. Kno^Yn he was, indeed, to many eradite foreign- ers, and especially to the admiring academi- cians of Florence, of Eome, and of Venice. His genius and piety had also won the apprecia- tive plaudits of the able professors of the re- formed theology at Geneva. Yet when, in the brilliant belles-lettres circles of the Continent, critics counted the famous scholars of the age, and lauded the great rhetoricians, the}' did not couple Milton's name with those of Grotius and the literati. An event however now occurred which speedily gave him a splendid European repu- tation, and not only in the opinion of his con- temporaries, but in the estimation of calm pos- terity^, linked his name with those of the grand- est and most immortal writers. Charles Stuart, the exiled son of the re- cently executed monarch, spurred thereto by 174 THE LIFK AND TIMES filial l>ii'tv and :» nnfiiral »l(>siiv to ki-cp liis nnnio niul rt\i::il <"l;iiiiis IxMoic* Kun^no, dotcr- minotl ti> iii\(tk(\ in llu^ (Icft-nco of lii.s liousc nnd fainlinix cause, tlio pen »>f some tncMl con- tinontnl writer; hftpinu^ thus, thouirh beaten in many a stricken ticld, to retrieve his sbatteretl fortunes in the arena of letters. The vt)iee of lame sj^eedily led the exile to seleet Tlaudius Salmasius, thtMi residing; at Levdcn in the ea- paeitv of honorary professor in tlu^ tniiversity. Salniasius was descended from a noMe fam- ily, whose seat was n«'ar lh(> town o( Semar, in the ancient pnn'inec of l>urguuish citadel. Since the death (»f the illus- trious younger Scaliger, no scholar had accjuir- cd the re]uitation of Salmasius. Tlu^ author of many rare and imjicrishable works, (i rot ins alone was at that lime ranked as his equal. Selden s]>eaks of (^rotius as "the greatest, the chief of men,^' and of Salmasius as "most ad- mirable," whom he desired much mc^re tt^ re- OF JOHN MILTON. 175 seruble than the most eminent person for riches and honor in the world; and Cardinal Riche- lien declared that Bignon, GrotiuH, and Salma- gius were the only f>er5on5 of that age whom he looked njK>n as having arrived at the snm- mit of learning.* ''Salma?ias was a man of skill in languages, knowle^jge of antiqnity, and sagacity of criticism, almost exceeding all hope of human attainment ; and having by excessive praises been confirmed in great confidence in himself, thongh he probably had not much con- sidered the principles of society and the rights of government, undertook the employment with- out the distrust of his own qualifications; and as his exfHidition in writing was wonderful, in 1649—50 published the 'Defensio Begi/i.' It is certainly wonderful that Salmasius, the pen- sioner of a republic, should write a vindication of monarchy. '*f Perhaps however Charles' re- taining fee of a hundred jacobuses may afford a satisfactory solution of the enigma, espec- ially if the haughty pride of the self-confident scholar at being selected by a prince for such a service be considered. • Mitford'a Life, pp. 51. 52. t Johnson'a Life; of Miltcai 170 THE LIFE AND TIMES The appearance of the '' Defensio Regia^^ created a decided sensation, though it is said to have somewhat disappointed the expectations of the learned.* Still it was a formidable volume, both on account of its author's reputa- tion and its own intrinsic merit. It abounded in subtle and specious arguments, clothed in pure and perspicuous language. Upon its publication in England, the Council of State immediately met and unanimousl}" ap- pointed Milton to answer Salmasius and defend the Commonwealth. " His compliance with the honorable requisition was instant; and, inatten- tive to the suggestions of his friends, who were fearful of his reputation, committed against so renowned an adversary; undeterred by the remonstrance of his physicians, who predicted that the loss of his sight would be the infallible result of his labor; and unrestrained by the dissuasion of his bad health, which allowed him to compose only at intervals and with hourly interruptions, he persevered in the duty which he had undertaken ; and with .principle strong within his heart, and the attraction of glory * Symmons' Life, p. 301. or JOHN MILTON. 177 bright before liis view, he produced, earl}^ in the year 1651, that noble acquittal of his en- gagement to the Council, ' The Defence of (lie People of England.^ ^^'^ Both the '^DefensioBegia,'''' and the ''Defence of the People,''^ were written in Latin. It was the purpose of Salmasius to support the despotic dogma of the divine right of kings ; to prove that in the monarch resides naturally and of right the sovereign power, and that the king is responsible for his acts to God alone. Milton, taking the extreme republican ground, asserted with masterly and unanswerable logic the un- limited sovereignt}^ of the people. In compre- hensive erudition, in profound political wisdom, in sublime poetic eloquence, in noble Christian sentiment, in terse logical power, in biti'ng sat- ire, in mirth-provoking wit, in all those attri- butes which make a composition approximate perfection, Milton's magnificent defence of the Commonwealth stands to this day unrivalled. Milton used every art known to his rhetoric to interest and attract all classes, knowing well the importance in a contest like that, as Boyle * Symmons' Life, \)\}. 310, 311. 8* 178 THE LIFE AND TIMES acutely observes, of "getting the laughers on our side." The pointed personalities, the ag- gravated censures, which now perhaps form the chief blemishes of the "Defence" as read by our sober, unprejudiced eyes, were then one of the causes of its power and popularity. No means of teasing his adversary was omitted. The venality and accommodating pliancy of opinion which could enable Salmasius, "the pensioner of a republic," as Dr. Johnson calls him, to prostitute his pen to the defence of humbled despotism, is vividly and scathingly portrayed by Milton's pencil. He even makes the Leyden professor the subject of a spol*tive sally in iambics : "Who to our English tuned Sahnasius' throat? ^Mio taught the pye to speak our •\vortls by rote ? A hundred golden Jameses* did the feat : He learned to prattle, for he wished to eat. Let the fidse glare of gold allure his hope ; And he whose stormy voice late shook the Pope, And threatened antichrist with speedy death, Will soothe the conclave with his tuneful breath. " Milton laid the foundation of his argument broad and strong, rearing thereon a rhetorical edifice of singular s^^mmetry and perfection. * In allusion to the hundred jacobuses Salmasius received from Charles for imdertaking the defence. OF JOHN MILTON. 179 Starting with the assertion of the original and unlimited sovereignty of the people, he proves that by the laws of God, by those of nations, and by the municipal laws of England, a king may be impeached, and if found guilty, he may be executed. He affirms that in this the canons of God exactl}^ agree with the dic- tates of nature ; and that it is a settled maxim of natural law, unimpeachable and eternal, that the people are the source of power, and are therefore superior to their servant and creature, the king or magistrate. If therefore it be asked by what law Charles was put to death, the answer is, by that law which God established, and which nature sternly enjoins. He boldly asserts that whatever is for the general good of the state, is for that reason just and imperative ; that a people bound by oath to the support of a government or prince, are discharged of that obligation when government becomes destructive of its just ends, or the king assumes to plaj^ the tyrant. So circum- stanced, the law dispenses with a people's alle- giance. These doctrines, he claims, are not unique, or new,* but have received the com- 180 THE LIFE AND TIMES mon sanction of mankind, and arc covered with the hoar of ages. This he proves by copious citations from the histor}' of ancient nations. Thus the kings of the Jews were subject to the selfsame law which controlled the people ; and he traces, with masterly erudition, the same principle through Egypt, through Persia, through the glowing legends of Grecian history to the an- nals of the Roman empire. Crossing the sea with the Roman conqueror, he shows that the principle obtained a fixed lodgment in early Britain ; that it maintained itself through the Saxon epoch, through the Norman conquest, and was incorporated in the English constitu- tion by usage and acquiescence; growing stronger and more clearly defined as civiliza- tion lighted its myriad torches, until it touched its climax in the necessary execution of Charles Stuart, and the banishment of his outlawed son. The argument concludes with this magnif- icent address : "So far, with God's assistance, have I ac- complished my original purpose of defending, both at home and abroad, the proud achieve- or JOHN MILTON. 181 merits of my countrymen against tlie insane and malignant fury of a frantic sophist; and of vindicating — as the enem}^^ not of kings, but of tyrants — the general rights of the subject from the unjust despotism of the prince. Nor have I consciously left unanswered a single argument, instance, or evidence, adduced by my antagonist, which appeared to possess the smallest portion either of strength or conclu- siveness ; having rather perhaps inclined to the opposite fault, of replying too frequently even to his irrelevant and trivial sopliistries, and of treating them, as arguments, with a degree of attention of which they were undeserving. " One thing alone, but perhaps the most important, remains: that you also, my coun- trymen, should yourselves unite with me in the confutation of your enemy; and this, in my opinion, can no otherwise be effected than by a perpetual effort on your part to rise above his calumnies, and to crush them with your vir- tues. To your ardent vows and supplications the Almighty indulgently listened when, under the yoke of double servitude, you sued to him for deliverance. You are the first among the 182 THE LIFE AND TIMES nations whom lie luis gloriously rescued from the oppression of tyranny and superstition, those two mighty evils which are the most hostile to the perfection of man. To you, the first of the human race, did he impart the mag- nanimity to submit to the solemnit}" of a judicial trial, and, when found guilty, to punish with a just death your vanquished and captive king. "After a deed so illustrious, nothing low or narrow^ nothing but what is great and ex- alted should enter j^our thoughts and actions. To this lofty superiority of character you can rise onl}' by showing that, as you have quelled your enemies in war, so with fortitude equally unexampled, without arms, and in profound peace, you can subdue ambition and avarice, the power of wealth, and the corruption of prosperity, which triumph over the rest of your species ; and by exhibiting, in the pres- ervation of your freedom, a degree of justice, temperance, and moderation, proportioned to the valor which you evinced in its attainment. " B}^ these arguments and evidences alone can you satisfactoril}- prove that you are not, as your calumniator afiQrms, 'Rebels,' 'Rob- OF JOHN MILTON. 183 bers,' 'Ruffians,' 'Parricides,' and 'Fanatics,' and that jou. have not — under the impulse of ambition or a wish to plunder, not incited by sedition or by depraved passions, not in a par- oxj^sm of folly or phrenzy — murdered a king ; but that, elevated and kindled with the love of libert}^, of religion, of equity, of honor, and of your country, you have inflicted punishment upon a tja'ant. "If however, which God avert, your proj- ects and purposes be different; if, notwith- standing j-^our signal experience of a Deity so propitious to yourselves and so destructive to your foes ; after all your bravery in war, you are resolved to be corrupt in peace, and unaf- fected by the memorable and awful example before your eyes, you disdain ' to learn to do justice, and to walk humbly with jour Grod,' for my part, I must indeed be constrained re- luctantly to acknowledge the truth of all these infamous charges against you, which are now uttered or conceived by the slanderers of your fame ; and you will but too quickly feel the wrath of the Almighty in a much more power- ful deo-ree than it has ever visited vour ene- 184 THE LIFE AND TIMES mics, or tliiiu you yourselves have ever expe- rienced, beyond the other nations of modern times, his kind, indulgent, and paternal love."* "This great display of intellectual poAver was received with the plaudit of tlie world; and as the author's name was not in any wide celebrity out of his own country, the general surprise was nearly equal to the general admi- ration. Congratulations and acknowledgments of respect poured in upon him from every quarter, and the scholars of Europe, actuated by a similar spirit with the spectators of tlie old Olympic games, threw garlands on the con- queror of Salmasius. On the publication of the ^Defence of the People of England,^ all the ambassadors in London, of whom perhaps the greater number were from crowned heads, dis- covered their sense of its merit hj compliment- ing or visiting its author ; and he was gratified by letters, replete with praise and with pro- fessions of esteem, from foreigners eminent for their talents and erudition. "f As for Salmasius, already broken in health, * Proso Works, Vol. V., p. 194. t Symmons' Life, pp. 322, 323. or JOHN MILTON. 185 smote by the "thunder-clasping hand" of the mighty Englishman, and having in his intel- lectual armory no polemical weapons with which to parry the blow, he quitted Leyden bitterly chagrined, and repairing to the mineral waters of Spa for seclusion and relief, shortly after died there. No more terrible and utter demolition was ever given an opponent than Milton's cruci- fying expose. He might say, with stout and somewhat cynical old Wither,''' ' ' I stript abuse from all her colors quite, And laid lier ugly face to open sight." And again : ' ' I have my pen so point that, vrhere it traces, Each accent doth di'aw blood into their faces." Yet he is never exactly vindictive, but knows how to be "harsh as truth and uncom- promising as justice" when defending against hireling assaults and despotic precepts the majestic tenets of civil and religious liberty. * John Wither, a noted Puritan poet and satirist of that age ; bom in 1588, and sometime a major-general in the Parliamentary army under Cromwell. 186 THE LIFE AND TIMES CHAPTER XIII. The hearty applause with which the ''De- fence of the EngUsli People" was greeted by continental thinkers, was doubly echoed b}^ Milton's own grateful and appreciative coun- trj'men. The Council of State voted him a donation of a thousand pounds from the pub- lic treasury, as a testimonial of their sense of his service to the Commonwealth.* He had besides the gratification to perceive that, while the libel of Salmasius "lingered on the vend- ers' shelves, or crept languidl}' through a very confined circulation," his own immortal work passed rapidly through several editions, and made him, as Bayle tells us, the conversation of the world. Nor did the distinction which the " Defence'' enjoyed of being publicl}' burn- ed by the common hangman in the squares of Paris and Toulouse tend to decrease the de- mand for it, or to lessen the fame of its great writer. • TolantL Symmons, p. 335. or JOHN MILTON. 187 It was at this time, wlien Milton was at the zenith of his contemporary fame, that the cele- brated Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, the faithful friend of religious tolera- tion, and the dauntless defender of civil and ecclesiastical liberty, dispatched by his loving disciples at home on a mission to England, contracted that intimate friendship with the Latin Secretary of the Council and with the younger Yane, the influence of which has been so beneficent to either continent. Roger Williams reached London some time in 1651. Taking a house in the immediate vicin- ity of the respective residences of Milton and Yane, his mission brought him to their speedy notice ; while his republican sentiments, his religious fervor, his profound scholarship, and his tolerant principles soon secured their re- spect, which feeling ere long ripened into the most intimate friendship. Domesticated in England for some years — he did not return to America until 1654 — Roger Williams feked out his slender income by receiving, after Milton's fashion, a number of pupils. During this time the close familiarity in which he lived with 188 THE LIFE AND TIMES Milton and with Tanc, is shown by several passages in his writings. It appears that he even exchanged literary offices with Milton; for on his return to Rhode Island, in giving his friend Governor Winthrop of Connecticut an account of his employments while abroad, he uses this language : " It pleased the Lord to call me for some time and with some persons to practise the Hebrew, the Greek, Latin, French, and Dutch ; the Secretary of the Council, Mr. Milton, for my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages.'"* Is it possible to overestimate the influence of an intimate association of two or three years with such master-minds as those of John Mil- ton and Sir Henry Yane upon so congenial a spirit as that of Roger Williams? May not many of those broad, tolerant, and self-sacri- ficing principles which distinguished Roger Williams' career, have owed their origin to the close intimacy and the friendly chat of these 'three illustrious men in the vigorous days of the Endish Commonwealth? * See Appleton's " Cyclopsedia ;" also various biographical sketches of Roger Williams. OF JOHN MILTON. 189 On the second of May, 1G52, Milton's fam- ily was increased by the birth of a fourth child, Deborah; whose advent into the world, how- ever, cost the life of her mother. Milton seems ever after their reconciliation to have lived very happily with his wife, and she died re- gretted and mourned by him. " He was thus," says Dr. Sj^mmons, "left with three orphan daughters in domestic solitude, and in a state rapidly advancing to blindness. As we have seen, his physicians predicted loss of sight as the inevitable result of his persistence in the compilation of the ^'BefenceT Their prophetic declarations were fatally verified : his sight, naturally weak, and impaired by long years of ceaseless devotion to study and neglect of all precautions, had been for many months sensi- bly declining; and completely overtasked by the labor of this last work, he became, proba- bly some time in 1G53, totally blind. Leonard Philarus, an Athenian scholar who had been enthusiastically attached to Milton by the perusal of his ''Defence of the English People,^^ and who had even visited England for the purpose of making the per- 190 THE LIFE AND TIMES sonal acquaintance of the immortal P^nglish- man, upon learning Milton's misfortune, wrote liim from Paris, urging him to forward a de- tailed account of his blindness, which he prom- ised to submit to the consideration of 'SI. The- venot, then an eminent oculist. In response to this request, Milton communicated the follow- ing facts, peculiarly interesting and sad : "It is now about ten years I think since I first perceived my sight to grow weak and dim, and at the same time my spleen and other vis- cera heav}' and flatulent. When I sate down to read as usual of the morning, my eyes gave me considerable pain, and refused their oflBcc till fortified by moderate exercise of body. If I looked at a candle, it appeared surrounded with an iris. In a little time a darkness, cov- ering the left side of the left eye, which was partially clouded some years before the other, intercepted the view of all things in that direc- tion. Objects also in front seemed to dwindle in size whenever I closed my right eye. This eye too for three years gradually failing, a few months previous to my total blindness, while I was perfectly stationary, every thing OF JOHN MILTON. 191 seemed to swim backward and forward; and now thick vapors appear to settle on my fore- head and temples, which weigh down my lids with an oppressive sense of drowsiness, espec- ially in the interval between dinner and the evening, so as frequently to remind me of Phin- eas the Salmydessian, in the Argonautics : " 'In darkness swam his brain, and where he stood, The steadfast earth seemed rolling as a flood. Nerveless his tongue, and, every power oppressed. He sank, and languished into torpid rest. ' "I ought not however to omit mentioning, that, before I wholly lost my sight, as soon as I lay down in my bed and turned upon either side, brilliant flashes of light used to issue from my closed eyes ; and afterwards, upon the gradual failure of my powers of vision, colors, proportionably dim and faint, seemed to rush out with a degree of vehemence, and a kind of inward noise. These have now faded into uni- form blackness, such as issues on the extinc- tion of a candle ; or blackness varied only and intermingled with a dunnish grey. The con- stant darkness however in which I live day and night inclines more to a whitish than to a blackish tinge, and the eye, in turning itself 192 THE LIFE AND TIMES round, admits, as tliruugh a narrow chink, a very small portion of light. But this, though it may perhaps ofTer a similar glimpse of hope to tlie physician, docs not prevent me from making up ni}' mind to m}- case, as one evi- dently beyond the reach of cure ; and I often reflect that, as many da3's of darkness, accord- ing to the wise man, Eccles. 11:8, are allotted to us all, mine, which, by the singular favor of the Deity, are divided between leisure and study, are recreated by the conversation and intercourse of m}' friends, and are far more agreeable than those deadly shades of which Solomon is speaking. "But if, as it is written, 'Man shall not live b}^ bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,' Matt. 4 : 4, why should not each of us likewise acqui- esce in the reflection that he derives the bene- fits of sight not from his eyes alone, but from the guidance and providence of the same supreme Being. While lie looks out and provides for me as he does, and leads me about, as it were, with his hand through the paths of life, I will- ingly surrender my own faculty of vision in OF JOHN MILTON. 193 conformity with his good pleasure ; and with a heart as strong and as steadfast as if I were a Lynceus, I bid j^ou, ni}- Philarus, farewell." This letter to Philarus was dated at West- minster, September 28, 1654, and speaks ol the loss of sight as no recent event. Singular- ly enough the precise date of Milton's blind- ness has never been definitely ascertained, thou2:h circumstances seem to indicate that it occurred sometime in 1652-3. Milton's enemies did not scruple to taunt him with his blindness, attributing it to the judgment of God upon him for his wicked writ- ings. But the calm Christian philosojoh}^, and the serene reliance upon the indisputable good- ness of the Creator, which peculiarly character- ized John Milton's mind, enabled him to bear without a murmur, and with pitying disdain, the heartless jibes of his relentless foes, from whose venomed shafts not even the sacred shelter of misfortune could cover him. There is nothing in history grander and more sub- lime than Milton's uncomplaining and sweet acceptance of a calamity which threatened to throw him out of the employment of the state, 19i THE LIFE AND TIMES to bliglit all prospect of a further literary career, and to lead him in darkness and penury to a speedy grave. This fortitude, and its source, he admirably displays in a touehingly beautiful sonnet ad- dressed to his friend Cyriac Skinner, a grand- son of that famous lawyer. Lord Coke. "TO CYEIAC SKINNER. "Cyriac, this thi-ee years day, these eyes, though clear To outward ^^cw of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have foi^ot ; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or stai-s, throughout the year. Or man, or woman : yet I argue not Against heaven's hand or yrHl, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and s-teer Eight onward. "VMiat supports me, dost thou ask ?- The conscience, friend, to have lost them overphed In Liberty's defence, my noble task. Of which all Eurojie rings from side to side ; This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask Content, though blind, had I no better guide." • When Milton came, a little later, to notice the slurs cast upon his loss of sight, he made it evident that he deliberately and serenely chose blindness and speech, rather than silence with sight. Actuated by the old martyr spirit, he tore out his eyes, in no metaphorical sense, and laid them upon the altar of slandered and outraged liberty. or JOHN MILTON. 195 He says, " When the task of repljing to the 'Defence of the Kincf was publicly com- mitted to me at a time when I had to contend with ill-health, and when one of my eyes being nearly lost, my phj^sicians clearly predicted that, if I undertook the laborious work, I should soon be deprived both of one and the other ; undeterred by the warning, I seemed to hear a voice, not of a physician, nor issuing from the shrine of Epidaurian Esculapius, but of some internal and divine monitor; and con- ceiving that, by some fatal decree, the alterna- tive of two lots was proposed to me, that I must either lose my sight, or must desert a high duty, the two destinies occurred to me which the son of Thetis reports to have been submit- ted to him by his mother from the oracle of Delphi: " 'For, as the goddess spoke who gave me birth, Two fates attend me while I live on earth. If fixed, I combat by the Trojan wall, Deathless my fame, but certain is my fall ; If I return — beneath my native sky My days shall flourish long — my glory die.' "Eeflecting therefore with myself, that man}" had purchased less good with greater evil, and had even paid life as the price of glor}', 196 THE LIFE AND TIMES while to mc the greater good was offered at the expense of tlie less evil ; that only by in- curring blindness I might satisfy the demand of the most honorable duty; and that glory even by itself ought universally to be regard- ed as of all human possessions the most cer- tain, the most desirable, and the most worthy of our esteem, I determined to dedicate the short enjoyment of my eyesight, with as much effect as I could, to the public advantage. " You see then what I have preferred, what I have lost, what motives influenced my con- duct. Let my slanderers therefore desist from their calumnies, nor make me the subject of their visionary and dreaming fancies. Let them know that I am far from regretting my lot, or from repenting of my choice ; let them be assured that my mind and m}' opinions are immovably the same ; that I am neither con- scious of the anger of God, nor believe that I am exposed to it; but, on the contrar}^ that I have experienced in the most momentous events of my life, and am still sensible of, his mercy and paternal kindness.'"''' * Defensio Secunda, Prose Works, Vol. V., p. 216. OF JOHN MILTON. 197 This beautiful sonnet exhibits still farther the patient and Christian spirit of Milton, and shows that the principles of religious faith en- abled him to triumph gloriously over the afflic- tions of the fleshly tabernacle, and " filled him with joy and peace in believing." «'0N MY BLINDNESS. "When I consider how my life is spent Ere half my daj's, in this dark world and wide, And that one taleut which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, ' Doth God exact day labor, UgJit denied ?' I fondly ask ; but patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, ' God doth not need Either man's works, or his ovsti gift ; who best Bears his mild yoke, they serve him best : his state Is kingly ; thoiisands at his bidding speed. And post o'er land and ocean withoiit rest : They also serve who only stand and wait. ' " "Equally unascertained with that of his blindness,'' says Dr. Symmons, "is the precise date of his second marriage, which took place, as we are informed, about two years after his entire loss of sight. The lady whom he chose on this occasion was Catharine, the daughter of a Captain Woodcock of Hackney. She seems to have been the object of her husband's fond- 198 THE LIFE AND TIMES est affection ; and dying, like her predecessor, in childbed, within a year after her marriage, she was lamented by him in a pleasing and pathetic sonnet." The daughter born to him at this time lingered but a few days, before fol- lowing her mother to the tomb. Inlirm, blind, and a widower for the second time, surely Milton needed all his faith in a Providence overruling all things for the best, to enable his chastened lips to say, " Not my will. Father, but thine be done." OF JOHN MILTON. 199 CHAPTER XIY. During the whole jDeriocl of domestic mis- fortune narrated in the preceding chapter, Milton's pen was employed as vigorously and as efifectiyely as ever, in the defence and elu- cidation of the principles of religion and just government. Two answers to the ''Defence of the People of England "' ere long appeared. The first was weakly though venomously written, and Mil- ton, not deigning to notice it, turned it over to the youthful pen of his nephew, Phillips, then scarce twenty years old. The other was published at the Hague in 1652, and was en- titled, ''The Cry of Royal Blood to Heaven against the Unglish Parricides.''^ In reply to this work, which was ably written, though full of ribald falsehood, Milton himself, urged there- to by the Council of State, drew his trenchant pen. Accordingly in 1654 appeared "A Second Defence of the Peojple of England,''^ which has 200 THE LIFE AND TIMES been prououneed the iiKist inlere.^liiig if not the most striking of his prose compositions.* The "Second Defence" is mainly of inter- est now on account of the fact that it contains many personal details concerning the habits, appearance, and purposes of its author, and also because of several valuable pen portraits of Milton's prominent republican and other friends and associates. In order clearly to understand the several passages which we give from this "Defence," it will be necessary to direct our attention once more to the political condition of Great Britain at this momentous conjuncture. It will be remembered that that portion of the Long Parliament which had survived the military invasion of 1648, and which has re- ceived in history the name of the "Rump" Parliament, had, after the execution of the king, new-modelled and rcpublicanized the government. Under the Parliament and the Council of State, of which Milton was secreta- ry, the conduct of public affairs had been ener- getic, able, and cflcctive. Many of the political • Symmous' Life, p. 353. OF JOHN MILTON. 201 acts of that unique administration had display- ed profound sagacity, and high statesmanship. The famous navigation act, which contributed so essentially to the naval supremacy of Great Britain then and ever after, was the offspring of its wisdom. The exchequer had been kept fully supplied. The entire civil establishment had, for the first time in several decades, been liberally and handsomely kept up; so that from the revenues of the state the various pub- lic officers and the army could be paid readily and promptly according to their several merits. It had moreover compelled the unhesitating respect of Continental Europe. Had the government been as careful to conciliate that public opinion at home upon which it professed to rest, as it was to preserve its dignity and high character, how different might have been the history of "the fast-an- chored island." Many of the domestic measures of the new administration had been exceedingly arbitrary and reprehensible. It had tampered with the jurisprudential system quite as offensivel}^ as had the Stuarts beforetime. High courts of 9* 202 THE LIFE AND TIMES justice of the nature of the Star Chamber had been repeatedly cstablislicd, and that palladium of popular rights, the jury trial, so dear to every English heart, and so justl}' eulogized by a long and illustrious line of lawyers and statesmen, from Coke and Bacon to Soraers and ^lans- field, had been dispensed with. The victims of these irresponsible tribunals, and their friends, made the island echo with their pro- tests; while the government, disregarding in its tenacious grasp of power the fundamental principle upon which it was based, and from which it drew its very breath — popular sover- eignty' — laid open its inconsistency and greedy ambition to the easy and inevitable observa- tion of the masses. The consequence of all this was that the Parliament became generally odious. But while the pojnilar assembh' was thus declining in the estimation of the people, the army, and especially its victorious and re- markable commander-in-chief, acquired a pro- portionate ascendency in the national favor. The conduct of the army, and of its leaders, had been quite as despotic and reprehensible, or JOHN MILTON. 203 to say the least, and that too without the cover of necessity or authority, as that of the Parlia- ment. But prejudice knows no reason, and the people, discontented and harassed, did not stop to philosophize, but clamored ominousl}'' for a reform. For the inauguration of the new regime they looked to Oliver Cromwell, then decorated with the almost imperial title of Captain-Gen- eral, and the idol alike of the army and of the populace. The early and lamented death of the accomplished and high-minded Hampden, the resignation of Fairfax, the sudden death of that stern and inflexible republican, and popular and potent leader, Ireton,'" had de- prived the nation of many of those leaders upon whom it had been wont to rely, while at the same time these circumstances had served to render the popularity of the grandest chief of them all, Cromwell, all but limitless. To him therefore the nation appealed in this crisis. Returning flushed with success from the splendid triumphs of Dunbar and Worcester, • Ireton died at Limerick, Ireland, of the plagiie, iu Nov. 1651. 204 THE LIFE AND TIMES where the royal cause, which the outlawed prince had sought to prop up by foreign inva- sion, had again and hopelessly fallen before the genius and the trenchant blade of the Captain- General, his ears were instantly filled with the popular grievances. "Wielding the army in his right hand and holding the people in his left, Cromwell now determined to remould the state. Whether he was urged to what is called his usurpation l)y hypocritical and impious ambition, or by honest and patriotic zeal for the welfare of the Commonwealth, is matter of mere idle speculation. He is to be judged by his acts, not by his secret impulses. Only the great Searcher of all hearts is competent to let the plummet down into Cromwell's soul and to disclose his motives. And this is what he did: the "Rump" Parliament was dismissed ; a new legislature was elected by Cromwell's own authority. After a brief and inefQcient existence of but a few months, this puny Parliament, which was called, from one of its leading members, a leather-seller of Fleet-street, "Barebone's Par- OF JOHN MILTON. 205 liament," was also rather roughly sent from the Council-chamber; and a board of officers as- sumed the authority, acting professedly for the nation, to appoint Cromwell to the supreme control, with the title of "Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England." At the same time provision was made for the triennial con- vocation of a Parliament in whose constitution the popular element was a decided feature. Into this high office the Lord Protector was installed, amid much enthusiasm and with mag- nificent ceremonies, on the 16th of December, 1653. History has of course branded this whole procedure as, in a technical sense, illegal ; but remembering the distraction of the times, the foundations of the great political deep broken up, anarchy running mad and raving through the aff'righted streets, all generous and libert}-- loving souls will find palliation for Cromwell's "usurpation," which gave> England a stable government, needed rest, and rational freedom, during the remainder of the great Protector's life. With this new government Milton at once 206 THE LIFE AND TIMES fell in, because "he confidently hoped," says Toland, " that Cromwell would employ his power and trust to extinguish the numerous factions in the state, and to settle a perfect form of free government, wherein no single person should enjoy any power above or be- side the laws." The Latin Secretaryship was continued under the Protectorate, with Milton still at its head, he being allowed to have, on account of his blindness, an assistant, one Andrew Mar- vell, a person of learning and real worth, be- sides being a devoted friend of the famous Sec- retary. Milton's salary continued to be 'two hundred pounds a year, as before. It is very certain that Milton warmly ad- mired Cromwell's genius and character. The Protector was a sincere friend of complete re- ligious toleration, not, as is too often the case, from carelessness or lukewarmness — for surely no man ever had rftore decided religious opin- ions than Oliver Cromwell — but from a firm belief in the justice of the principle. Here at the outset a chord of sympathy was established between these two celebrated men ; and when, OF JOHN MILTON. 207 shortly after his assumption of sovereign power, Cromwell proclaimed religious toleration, Mil- ton addressed to him this expressive and justly eulogistic sonnet: "Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud Not of war only, but distractions rude. Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way hath ploughed, And fought God's battles, and his work pursued, ■WTiile Darwent streams, with blood of Scots imbiied, And Dunbar's field resounds thy praises loud, And "Worcester's laureate wreath. Yet much remains To conquer still ; peace has her victories No less than those of war. New foes arise. Threatening to bind our souls in secular chains : Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose gosj^el is their maw. " It was, as before stated, in the year 1654 that the ''Second Defence of the English Peo- j9/6" was published, and consequently but a few months after the commencement of Crom- well's Protectorate. It is in this work, writ- ten under the circumstances just described, that Milton's portrait and eulogy of the Lord Protector appear. This apostrophe, though highly laudatory, is singularly free from flat- tery or sycophancy, and betrays the erect and austerely independent spirit which made John Milton in many respects a model citizen. 208 THE LIFE AND TIMES Milton thus expresses his approbation of Cromwell's dissolution of the Long Parliament: " When 3'ou saw them studious only of de- lay, and perceived each one more attentive to private advantage than public welfare; when 3'ou found the nation lamenting over their de- luded hopes, which were successively baffled and disappointed by the power of a few, you at length did that which they had been fre- quently warned and instructed to do, and put an end to their sittings." He bears this witness to Cromwell's relig- ious character : "Such was the discipline of his mind, moulded not merely to military subor- dination, but to precepts of Christianity, sanc- tity, and sobriety, that all the good and val- iant were irresistibly drawn to his camp, not only as to the best school of martial science, but also of piety and religion ; and those who joined it were necessarily rendered such by his example." Milton next proceeds animatedl}' and strik- ingly to group the remarkable events which had sprinkled Cromwell's path with the stars of glory since his appointment to the Captain- OF JOHN MILTON. 209 generalship of the army. He enumerates the complete reconquest of Ireland, the definitive subjugation of Scotland, the great and crown- ing victory at Worcester, the dissolution of the Long Parliament, the meeting and subsequent abdication of the "Barebone's" Parliament. He pictures the deserted Commonwealth as leaning on the single arm of the Protector, who, " by that best of rights, acknowledged by reason and given by God, the right of superior talents and virtue, is in possession of the su- preme power." Then resting from his mas- terly resume^ he speaks of Cromwell's magnan- imous rejection of the title of king, which had been pressed upon him, and adds this pane- gyric : "Proceed then, Oh Cromwell, and exhibit, under every circumstance, the same loftiness of mind ; for it well becomes you, and is con- sistent with your greatness. The redeemer, as you are, of your country, the author, the guardian, the preserver of her liberty, you can assume no additional character more important or more auo-ust; since not onlv the actions of our kings, but the fabled exploits of our heroes 210 THE LIFE AND TIMES are overcome by your aclncvements. Reflect then frequently — liow dear alike the trust, and the Parent from whom you received it — that to your hands your country has commended and confided her freedom ; that what she late- ly expected from her choicest representatives, she now hopes only from you. Oh reverence this high confidence, this hope of your coun- try, relying exclusively upon yourself: rever- ence the countenances and the wounds of those brave men who have so nobly struggled for liberty under your auspices, as well as the manes of those who have fallen in the conflict : reverence also the opinion and the discourse of foreign communities; their lofty anticipation with respect to our freedom so valiantly ob- tained, to our republic so gloriously establish- ed, of which the speedy extinction would in- volve us in the deepest and the most unexam- pled infamy: reverence, finally, yourself; and suffer not that liberty, for the attainment of which you have endured so manj^ hardships, to sustain any violation from your hands, or any from those of others. Without our free- dom, in fact, you cannot yourself be free ; for OF JOHN MILTON. 211 it is justly ordained by nature, that he who in- vades the liberty of others, shall, in the very outset, lose his own, and be the first to feel that servitude which he has induced. But if the very patron, the tutelary deity as it were, of freedom — if the man the most eminent for justice and sanctity, and general excellence, should assail that liberty which he has asserted, the issue must necessarily be pernicious, if not fatal, not only to the aggressor, but to the en- tire sj^stem and interests of piety herself: honor and virtue would, indeed, appear to be empty names; the credit and character of religion would decline and perish, under a wound more deep than any which, since the first transgres- sion, has been inflicted on the race of man. " You have engaged in a most arduous un- dertaking, which will search you to the quick ; which will scrutinize you through and through ; which will bring to the severest trial your spirit, your energy, your stability ; which will ascertain whether you are really actuated by that living piety and honor and equity and moderation, which seem, b}' the favor of God, to have raised you to your present high dignity. 212 THE LIFE AND TIMES "To rule with your counsels throe mighty realms; in the place of their erroneous institu- tions to substitute a sounder sj'stem of doctrine and of discipline; to pervade their remotest provinces with unremitting attention and anx- iety, vigilance and foresight ; to decline no la- bors, to jield to no blandishments of pleasure, to spurn the pageantries of wealth and of pow- er — these are difficulties in comparison with which those of war are mere levities of plaj^; these will sift and winnow you ; these demand a man sustained by the divine assistance — tu- tored and instructed almost by a personal com- munication with his God. " These and more than these you often, as I doubt not, revolve and make the subjects of your deepest meditation, grcatlj^ solicitous how, most happil}', they maybe achieved, and your coun- try's freedom be strengthened and secured: and these objects you cannot, in my judgment, otherwise effect than b}' admitting, as jou. do, to an intimate share in your counsels, those men who have alread}' participated your toils and dangers — men of the utmost moderation, integrity, and valor ; not rendered savage or OF JOHN MILTON. 213 austere by the sight of so much bloodshed and of so many forms of death ; but inclined to justice, to a reverence of the Deit}", to a sym- pathy with human sufferings, and animated, for the preservation of iibert}^, with a zeal strength- ened by the hazards which, for its sake, they have encountered — men not raked together from the dregs of our own or of a foreign pop- ulation, not a band of mercenary adventurers, but men chiefly of superior condition; in ex- traction noble or reputable; with respect to property considerable or competent, or, in some instances, deriving a stronger claim to our re- gard even from their poverty itself — men not convened by the lust of plunder, but, in times of extreme difficulty, amid circumstances gen- erally doubtful, and often almost desperate, excited to vindicate their country from op- pression ; and prompt, not only in the safe- ty of the senate-house to wage the war of words, but to join battle with the enemy on the field. "If we will then renounce the idleness of never-ending and fallacious expectation, I see not in whom, if not in such as these, we can 214 THE LIFE AND TIMES ])lace reliance and trnst. Of their fidklity we have the surest and most indisputable proof, in the readiness which they have discovered even to die, if it had been their lot, in the cause of their country; of their piety, in the devotion with which, having repeatedl}' and successfully implored the protection of heaven, they uni- formly ascribed the glory to Him from whom they had solicited the victory ; of their justice, in their not exempting even their king from trial or from execution ; of their moderation, in our own experience, and in the certainty that if their violence should disturb the peace which they have established, they would them- selves be the first to feel the resulting mis- chiefs, themselves would receive the first wounds in their own bodies, while they were again doomed to struggle for all their fortunes and honors now happily secured ; of their for- titude, lastly, in that none ever recovered their liberty with more bravery or eflfect, to give us the assurance that none will ever watch over it with more solicitous attention and care."* * Prose Works, Vol. V., p. 259. OF JOHN MILTON. 215 Milton closed the "Second Defence" Avith this dignified and pathetic address : "For myself, whatever may be the final result, such efforts as in my judgment were the most likely to be beneficial to the Common- wealth I have made without reluctance, though not, as I trust, without effect. I have wielded my weapons for liberty not only in our domes- tic scene, but on a far more extensive theatre, that the justice and the principle of our extra- ordinarj^ actions, explained and vindicated both at home and abroad, and rooted in the general approbation of the good, might be unquestion- ably established, as well for the honor of my compatriots as for precedents to posterity. "That the conclusion prove not unworthy of such a commencement, be it my country- men's to provide; it has been mine to deliver a testimony, I had almost said to erect a mon- ument, which will not soon deca}^, to deeds of greatness and of glory almost transcending hu- man panegyric. And if I have accomplished nothing further, I have assuredly discharged the whole of my engagement. "As a bard however who is denominated 216 THE LIFE AND TIMES epic, if he conriiic liis work a little within cer- tain canons of composition, proposes to himself, for a subject of poetical embellishment, not the whole life of his hero, but some single action, such as the wrath of Achilles, the return of Ul^^sses, or the arrival in Italy of ^neas, and takes no notice of the rest of his conduct ; so will it suffice either to form my vindication or to satisfy my duty, that I have recorded in heroic narrative one only of my fellow-citi- zen's achievements. The rest I omit; for who can declare all the actions of an entire people? "If, after such valiant exploits, you fall into gross delinquency, and perpetrate any thing unworthy of j'ourselves, posterity will not fail to discuss and to pronounce sentence on the disgraceful deed. The foundation they will allow indeed to have been firmly laid, and the first — na}', more than the first — parts of the superstructure to have been erected with suc- cess, but with anguish they will regret that there were none found to carry it forward to completion; that such an enterprise and such virtues were not crowned with perseverance; that a rich harvest of glory and abundant ma- OF JOHN MILTON. 217 terials for heroic achievement were prepared, bnt that men were wanting to the illnstrious opportiinit}^, while there wanted not a man to instruct, to urge, to stimulate to action — a man who could Call fame as well upon the acts as the actors, and could spread their names over lands and seas to the admiration of all future ages."* The effect produced b}" the publication of the "Second Defence" was profound. The presses employed in its issue could not keep pace with the popular demand for it, and it served to raise John Milton still higher, if that were possible, in the estimation of the republicans and the scholars of that epoch. Milton's friend and assistant, Andrew Mar- vcll, presented a copy of the work to the Lord Protector, with the compliments of the author. Terribly galled by the crushing force and sarcasm of Milton's "Second Defence," Alex- ander Morus, w^ho had been mistaken by the great Englishman for the author of the pamph- let to which his work was an answer, f ven- * Prose W^orks, Vol. V., p. 2G6. \ The real author was a Frencliman named Dii Moulin, ■who, Jlllton. 10 218 THE LIFE AND TIMES turcd to piiblisli a book which he called " Fides Piiblica,'- or Public Faith. Milton rejoined by writing his '' Defencio Pro,'' or defence of him- self, in which he handled his unfortunate ad- versary with the most extreme severity. This was published in 1655. Apparently in the same year, Morus printed a '' SuppJemenhan" which was speedil}' silenced by a brief "i?e- sponsio''' from Milton, in which poor Morus was again so riddled and ridiculed that he gladl}' retired into obscurity, leaving Milton in undisputed possession of the field. Thus closed a long and bitter controvers}', in which Milton had fairly earned, and then wore by general consent, the proud title of "the peo- ple's champion and conqueror.'' fearful of exposing his own head to ililton's literary hatchet, per- Biiaded More, or ilorus, in an luihapjiy moment, to publish and father it. OF JOHN MILTON 219 CHAPTER XV. At the conclusion of the famous controver- sy with Salmasius, and of those collateral ones which had grown out of that central literary combat, Milton for a time laid aside his polem- ical pen, and devoted himself to his private studies and the duties of his office. He does not appear to have been very frequent in his attendance upon the government. This is shown by an extract from a letter of his to a young friend who had solicited his influence in obtaining the office of secretary to the English ambassador in Holland : " I am grieved that it is not in my power to serve you on this point, inasmuch as I have very few familiarities with the gratiosi of the court, who keep myself al- most wholly at home, and am willing to do so." His absence from the public councils was owing to no political dissatisfaction, but to his blindness and ill-health. His good friend and assistant, Andrew Marvell,* probably perform- * Andre-w Marvell was born in 1620, in the town of Hull, where his father was settled as vicar. He was early distingiiished for his 220 THE LIFE AND TIMES ed the routine duties of the secretaryship, Mil- ton being consulted only in regard to the more important foreign questions and imbroglios. Although he was thus eased of the more oner- ous burdens of his office, his diplomatic pen was still kept quite busy. In 1055 he wrote the elegant and forcible manifesto issued by the Protector in justification of his war with Spain. In this same year he published, under the title of ''The Cabinet Council," Sir Walter Raleigh's manuscript of aphorisms on the art of government. A little previous to the pro- duction of these compositions, he addressed talents aud aj^petite for learning, being sent at the early age of thirteen to Cambridge University. Possessed of ample fortune, he made a toiir of the Continent, tivn-jing some time at Constantinople in the capacity of Secretary to the British embassy at the Turkish court. Ardently wedded to the libcnd and Puritan party, shortly after his return to England, he attached himself to the fortunes of Cromwell, by whom he was, in KioT, associated with ^klilton in the Latin secretfiryship. In the Parliament summoned just before the Kestoration, he represented his native town, and though not sin- gularly eloquent, he played in its debates aud plans a prominent part. Learned, moral, and sedate, he preserved through his life the respect of the court partj', and the aflection of his friends. Himself no inconsiderable author, his various writings were then highly esteemed and eagerly sought. His pen was on more than one occasion wielded in the defence of his immortal friend, John Milton. He died in 1078, in his fifty-eighth year. As he was ap- parently in vigorous health at the time of his decease, his death was attributed to the effect of poison. niCO. BHIT., ARTICLE, "MARVELL.* OF JOHN MILTON. 221 some eulogistic verses to the eccentric Chris- tiana, queen of Sweden, sending them in the name of Cromwell. Milton now spent most of his leisure hours in the prosecution of three literar}^ projects : the composition of his history of England, of which mention has been already made, the compilation of a Latin dictionary, which he left in too undigested a state for publication, though the materials which he accumulated were advantageously employed by the editors of the Cambridge dictionary in later years,* and in the perfection of the plan and the lay- ing of the groundwork of his immortal epic. "Some great production in the highest region of poetry had been, as we have observed, in his contemplation from the commencement nearly of his literary life. The idea accompa- nied him to Italy, where, with a more defined object, it acquired a more certain shape from the example of Tasso, and the conversation of Tasso's friend, the accomplished Marquis of Villa. From this moment it seems to have been immovably fastened in his mind; and though • Symmons' Life, pp. 403, 404. Todd's Life, p. 97. 222 THE LIFE AND TIMES for a season oppressed and overwhelmed by the incumbent duties of controversy, its root was full of life and })regnant with stately vegeta- tion. At the time of which we are speaking, the end of 1653 and the beginning of 1654, the mighty work, according to Phillips, was seriously undertaken ; and it is curious to re- flect on the steadiness of its growth under a complication of adverse circumstances ; and to see it, like a pine on the rocks of Norway, as- cending to its majestic elevation beneath the inclemency of a dreary sky, and assailed in the same moment by the fury of the ocean at its feet and the power of the tempest above its bead."''' It may also be noticed as a proof of Mil- ton's indefatigable studiousness, that he had collected all the important state papers from the death of the king to the year 1658 — prob- ably with a view to render them easily ac- cessible to the future historian of his times. f These rested in manuscript form until 1743, when they were published under the title of " Original Letters and Pajiers of State, address- * Symmons' Life, pp. 404, 405. t Todd's Life, p. 97. OF JOHN MILTON. 223 ed to Oliver Cromwell, concerning the Affairs of Great Britain, from the year 1649 to 1658. Found among the Political Collections of Mr. John Milton, now first published from the origi- nals, hy John Nicholls, Jr., memher of the Socie- ty of Antiquarians, London^ This collection is singularly interesting, as read by the eyes of this generation, and abounds in curious data, anecdotal, historical, and biographical, together with several addresses to, and por- traits of, the prominent supporters of what Milton fondly calls, :77ie good old cause'f^ It was in 1654 that Cromwell raised him- self and the Commonwealth to the highest pin- nacle of earthly honor, by his famous interven- tion in behalf of menaced Protestantism on the Continent. As Milton was the mouth of the Lord Protector on this occasion, a sketch of Cromwell's noble zeal, its cause and result, will come legitimately within the purview of the great Secretary's life. "The Duke of Savoy," saj^s the author of the Critical History of England, "raised a new persecution of the Yaudois, massacring * See Iklilton's Prose Works, ed. 1698, Vol. II., p. 797. 224 THE LIFE AND TIMES man}', and driving the rest from their lial)ita- tions. Wherefore Cromwell sent to the Fi-ench court, demanding of them to oblige that duke, (of Alva,) whom he knew to he in their power, to put a stop to his unjust fury, or otherwise he must break with them. The cardinal, Ma- zarini, objected to this as unreasonable. lie would do good offices, he said, but could not answer for the effects. However, nothing would satisfy the Protector till they obliged the duke to restore all he had taken from his Protestant subjects, and to renew their former privileges. " Cromwell wrote* on this occasion to the Duke of Alva himself, and by mistake omit- ted the title of 'Royal Highness' on his let- ter ; upon which the major part of the Council of Savoy were for returning it unopened; but one, representing that Cromwell would not pass by such an affront, but would certainly lay Yilla Franca in ashes, and set the Swiss cantons upon Savoy, with Cardinal Mazarini's influence, had the desired effect. The Pro- tector also raised money in England for the • Through Milton. OF JOHN MILTON. 225 poor sufferers, and sent an agent over to settle their afifairs.'' This picture makes the blood tingle in our veins, as we recall the paltry and selfish part which England had stooped to play in tlie Titanic religious wars of Continental Europe during the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. Cromwell and the Puritans were made of sterner stuff. Not satisfied with hav- ing achieved freedom and toleration for them- selves at home, thej^ were also zealous to be- stow the same beneficent boon upon suffering mankind, and woe betide the despot or the priest who ventured to rattle a secular or relig- ious chain within the hearing of the Puritan government of England in the iron daj^s of the Commonwealth. Sir Samuel Morland, the English ambassa- dor who was dispatched to Piedmont by the Lord Protector, carried with him a contribu- tion amounting to thirt}— eight thousand two hundred forty-one pounds sterling, or about two hundred thousand dollars, which had been specially takefl up for the Vaudois in the churches of G-reat Britain. Cromwell himself 10* 226 THE LIFE AND TIMES headed the subscription with £2,000, or ten thousand dollars.* Morland afterwards published a history of the crusade against the Yaudois, which the Protector's noble intervention had stopped, and illustrated his narrative with engravings of some of the most revolting and barbarous scenes wdiich ever harrowed the human heart. Upon these representations Milton founded his inimitable sonnet entitled, "OX THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT. 'Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bonea Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; Even them who kept thy faith so pure of old, When nil our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not ; in thy book record their groans WTio were thy sheej), and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the It