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Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of
Milton, apply to him only as one of a large body. We shall proceed to notice
some of the peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. And,
for that purpose, it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into
which the political world was at that time divided. We must premise, that our
observations are intended to apply only to those who adhered, from a sincere
preference, to one or to the other side. In days of public commotion, every
faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an
useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of
picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle,
and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. England, at the time of which
we are treating, abounded with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred
their support to every government as it rose, who kissed the hand of the King in
1640, and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell
was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at
Tyburn, who dined on calves' heads or stuck-up oak-branches, as circumstances
altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the
account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really deserved to be
called partisans.
We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps,
which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their
character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been
wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years
after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision.
They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at
the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of
letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and
the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore
abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and
dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their
nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the
Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of
human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game
for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of
history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should carefully
guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so
many excellent writers.
"Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio Che mortali perigli in so contiene: Hor
qui tener a fren nostro desio, Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."
Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures through a
long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising
materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King,
Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and
rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the
earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external
badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that
these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage
and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty elegance
which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy
good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if
we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the
specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and
fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.
The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the
daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with
acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually
ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was
too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve
him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with
contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure
worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity
through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable
brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their
contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and
the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless
interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were
constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and,
confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the
dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers
and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not
found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If
their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of
ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with
hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich
and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for
they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a
more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests
by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to
whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest
action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had
been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which
should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which
shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his
account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his
sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist, and the
harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp
of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the
blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened,
that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had
shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God.
Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement,
penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He
prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck
of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and
groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He
heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam
of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like
Vane, he thought himself entrusted with the scepter of the millennial year. Like
Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from
him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war,
these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind
them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard
nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them.
But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate
or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs
a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have
thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the
necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made
them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself
pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its
charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows,
but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had
cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them
above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to
pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the
world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling
down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in
human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.
Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the
absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic
habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by
straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of
their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad
system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites
and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics and
their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do
not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.
The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it was the cause
of religion. There was another party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by
learning and ability, which acted with them on very different principles. We
speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were,
in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with
regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by
the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and
proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to
have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it
is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout
associates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect,
and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted.
We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we have
spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candor. We shall not charge upon a
whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horseboys, gamblers and bravoes,
whom the hope of license and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars
to the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses
which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never
tolerated. We will select a more favorable specimen. Thinking as we do that the
cause of the King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain
from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. We
feel a national pride in comparing them with the instruments which the despots
of other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their
ante-chambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist
countrymen were not heartless dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and
simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction dressed up
in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valor, defending without love,
destroying without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency, a
nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual independence
was strong within them. They were indeed misled, but by no base or selfish
motive. Compassion and romantic honor, the prejudices of childhood, and the
venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa;
and, like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an
injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth
they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. It was
not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought, but for the
old banner which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers,
and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though
nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed,
in a far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the
grace of private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had also
many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for
women. They had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the
Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their
tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful.
Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have described. He
was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his
character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious
union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the
Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and
from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and
drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and
pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the
Puritans, he lived
"As ever in his great taskmaster's eye."
Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty judge and an
eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external circumstances,
their fortitude, their tranquility, their inflexible resolution. But not the
coolest skeptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the
contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous
jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny
with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental
qualities which were almost entirely monopolized by the party of the tyrant.
There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer
relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honor and
love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were
such as harmonize best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence
of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those
feelings he was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed
all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the
song of the Sirens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore.
He tasted the cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote against the
effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which captivated his
imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The statesman was proof against
the splendor, the solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the poet. Any
person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy
with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in the
Penseroso, which was published about the same time, will understand our meaning.
This is an inconsistency which, more than anything else, raises his character in
our estimation, because it shows how many private tastes and feelings he
sacrificed, in order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the
very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his hand is firm. He
does naught in hate, but all in honor. He kisses the beautiful deceiver before
he destroys her.
That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar
splendor, still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to overthrow a
forsworn king and a persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction
with others. But the glory of the battle which he fought for the species of
freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least understood, the
freedom of the human mind, is all his own. Thousands and tens of thousands among
his contemporaries raised their voices against Ship-money and the Star-Chamber.
But there were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and
intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from the liberty of
the press and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. These were the
objects which Milton justly conceived to be the most important. He was desirous
that the people should think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and
should be emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that of
Charles. He knew that those who, with the best intentions, overlooked these
schemes of reform, and contented themselves with pulling down the King and
imprisoning the malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem,
who in their eagerness to disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the
means of liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when they
should have thought of disenchanting.
"Oh, ye mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand And bound him fast. Without
the rod reversed, And backward mutters of dissevering power, We cannot free the
lady that sits here Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless."
To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the ties which bound a
stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, was the noble aim of Milton. To
this all his public conduct was directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians;
for this he forsook them. He fought their perilous battle; but he turned away
with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like those whom they
had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the
Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save
free conscience from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the same
great object, he attacked the licensing system, in that sublime treatise which
every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his
eyes. His attacks were, in general, directed less against particular abuses than
against those deeply-seated errors on which almost all abuses are founded, the
servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation.
That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments more
effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest literary services. He
never came up in the rear, when the outworks had been carried and the breach
entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he
wrote with incomparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when his
opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other subjects, and abandoned
prelacy to the crowd of writers who now hastened to insult a falling party.
There is no more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth
into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But it
was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapors, and
to brave the terrible explosion. Those who most disapprove of his opinions must
respect the hardihood with which he maintained them. He, in general, left to
others the credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious
and political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of
his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up
for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His
radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility.
"Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui caetera, vincit Impetus, et rapido contrarius
evehor orbi."
It is to be regretted 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 declamations of Burke sink
into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth-of-gold. The style is
stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise
Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his
controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in
bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic
language, "a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."
We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyze the
peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of
the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and to point out
some of those magnificent passages which occur in the Treatise of Reformation,
and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks
have already extended renders this impossible.
We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject.
The days immediately following the publication of this relic of Milton appear to
be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be
censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, how
worthless soever may be the offering which we bring to it. While this book lies
on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a
hundred and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in
his small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded
green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain
to find the day; that we are reading in the lines of his noble countenance the
proud and mournful history of his glory and his affliction. We image to
ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest
word, the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and
weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavor to console him, if
indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy
of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with
his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer
to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips.
These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall
we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other
minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead.
And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and
ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name,
we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which
have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in
the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and
have not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general
consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and
superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to
prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name,
are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers
which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to
the earth, and which were distinguished from the productions of other soils, not
only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate
and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify.
Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the
great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime
works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which
he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every
private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and
dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith
which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame.
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