In his loneliness he was still
visited by a few friends who were faithful to him, such as Andrew
Marvell and Cyriac Skinner.
visited by a few friends who were faithful to him, such as Andrew
Marvell and Cyriac Skinner.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v17 - Mai to Mom
10032 (#448) ##########################################
10032
JOAQUIN MILLER
What banners streamed above these seas?
And what strange seamen answered back
To other sea-king's beck and hail,
That blew across his foamy track ?
Sought Jason here the golden fleece ?
Came Trojan ship or ships of Greece ?
Came decks dark-manned from sultry Ind,
Wooed here by spacious wooing wind, -
So like a grand, sweet woman, when
A great love moves her soul to men ?
Came here strong ships of Solomon
In quest of Ophir by Cathay?
Sit down and dream of seas withdrawn,
And every sea-breath drawn away -
Sit down, sit down!
What is the good
That we go on still fashioning
Great iron ships or walls of wood,
High masts of oak, or anything?
Lo! all things moving must go by.
The sea lies dead. Behold, this land
Sits desolate in dust beside
His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand;
The very clouds have wept and died,
And only God is in the sky.
KIT CARSON'S RIDE
From (Songs of the Sierras )
UN? Now you bet you; I rather guess so!
But he's blind as a badger. Whoa, Paché boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn't believe it to look at his eyes,
But he is badger-blind, and it happened this wise: -
R
We lay in the grasses and the sunburnt clover,
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, to where our lodges lay,
One broad and unbroken sea of brown,
Awaiting the curtains of night to come down
## p. 10033 (#449) ##########################################
JOAQUIN MILLER
10033
To cover us over and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.
We lounged in the grasses — her eyes were in mine,
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine
In its wealth and its flood, pouring on and all over
Her bosom wine-red, and pressed never by one;
And her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover
Burnt brown as it reached to the kiss of the sun;
And her words were as low as the lute-throated dove,
And as laden with love as the heart when it beats
In its hot eager answer to earliest love,
Or a bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets.
We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride;
And the heavens of blue and the harvest of brown
And beautiful clover were welded as one,
To the right and the left, in the light of the sun. *
(Forty full miles if a foot to ride,
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils
Of red Camanches are hot on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon,” muttered bearded old Revels
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerked at his steed,
And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground;
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed:-
Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,
And speed you if ever for life you would speed,
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And feet of wild horses hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking high on the shore;
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire. ”
We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, cinched them on, cinched them over again,
XVII-628
## p. 10034 (#450) ##########################################
10034
JOAQUIN MILLER
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheers,
Cut away tapidaros, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the catenas red-spangled with gold,
And gold-mounted Colts, the companions of years,
Cast the silken serapes to the wind in a breath,
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse –
As bare as when born, as when new from the hand
Of God — without word, or one word of command.
Turned head to the Brazos in a red race with death,
Turned head to the Brazos with a breath in the hair
Blowing hot from a king leaving death in his course;
Turned head to the Brazos with a sound in the air
Like the rush of an army, and a flash in the eye
Of a red wall of fire reaching up to the sky,
Stretching fierce in pursuit of a black rolling sea
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free
And afar from the desert blew hollow and hoarse.
Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall;
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look nor low call
Of love-note or courage: but on o'er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we nose and gray nose,
Reaching long, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows;
Yet we broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer;
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.
Gray nose to gray nose, and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the arid earth rang,
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles! — thirty miles! - a dim distant speck -
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight,
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right -
But Revels was gone: I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
To right and to left the black buffalo came,
A terrible surf on a red sea of flame
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher.
## p. 10035 (#451) ##########################################
JOAQUIN MILLER
10035
And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud
And unearthly, and up through its lowering cloud
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire,
While his keen crooked horns, through the storm of his mane,
Like black lances lifted and lifted again;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through,
And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two.
I looked to my left then - and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs;
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes,
With a longing and love, yet a look of despair
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking steed faltered, his eager ears fell
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck's swell
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fell as dead.
Then she saw sturdy Paché still lorded his head,
With a look of delight; for nor courage nor bribe,
Nor aught but my bride, could have brought him to me.
For he was her father's, and at South Santafee
Had once won a whole herd, sweeping everything down
In a race where the world came to run for the crown.
And so when I won the true heart of my bride, -
My neighbor's and deadliest enemy's child,
And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe,-
She brought me this steed to the border the night
She met Revels and me in her perilous flight
From the lodge of the chief to the North Brazos side;
And said, so half guessing of ill as she smiled,
As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride
The fleet-footed Paché, so if kin should pursue
I should surely escape without other ado
Than to ride, without blood, to the North Brazos side,
And await her — and wait till the next hollow moon
Hung her horns in the palms, when surely and soon
And swift she would join me, and all would be well
Without bloodshed or word. And now as she fell
From the front, and went down in the ocean of fire,
The last that I saw was a look of delight
That I should escape – a love — a desire -
## p. 10036 (#452) ##########################################
10036
JOAQUIN MILLER
Yet never a word, not one look of appeal,
Lest I should reach hand, should stay hand or stay heel
One instant for her in my terrible flight.
Then the rushing of fire around me and under,
And the howling of beasts and a sound as of thunder -
Beasts burning and blind and forced onward and over,
As the passionate flame reached around them, and wove her
Red hands in their hair, and kissed hot till they died -
Till they died with a wild and a desolate moan,
As a sea heart-broken on the hard brown stone;
And into the Brazos I rode all alone
All alone, save only a horse long-limbed,
And blinded and bare and burnt to the skin.
Then just as the terrible sea came in
And tumbled its thousands hot into the tide,
Till the tide blocked up and the swift stream brimmed
In eddies, we struck on the opposite side.
*
Sell Paché - blind Paché? Now, mister, look here:
You have slept in my tent and partook of my cheer
Many days, many days, on this rugged frontier,
For the ways they are rough and Camanches were near;
But you'd better pack up, sir! That tent is too small
For us two after this! Has an old mountaineer,
Do you book-men believe, got no tum-tum at all ?
Sell Paché! - you buy him! - a bag full of gold ! -
You show him ! - tell of him the tale I have told!
Why, he bore me through fire, and is blind, and is old! -
Now pack up your papers, and get up and spin
To them cities you tell of — Blast you and your tin!
## p. 10036 (#453) ##########################################
## p. 10036 (#454) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON.
## p. 10036 (#455) ##########################################
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## p. 10036 (#456) ##########################################
1
JOHN MILTUN
## p. 10037 (#457) ##########################################
10037
JOHN MILTON
(1607-1674)
BY E. S. NADAL
M
((
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(c
ILTON was born in London, on December 9th, 1607; the son of
John Milton, who had amassed a competency as a scrivener.
The elder Milton, besides his professional success, attained
to considerable eminence as a musician. This talent, we know, de-
scended to his son; and it may be that this inheritance had some
bearing upon the genius of the poet, who was gifted with perhaps the
finest ear possessed by any English writer, and whom critics have
described as musical rather than a picturesque poet. Milton tells us
that he was instructed early, both at grammar schools and by private
masters, as my age would suffer. ” It was at St. Paul's School, how-
ever, which he had entered by the year 1620, that he began that
career of diligent study which he was to pursue through life. " From
my twelfth year of age,” he says, “I scarcely ever went from my
studies to bed before midnight. ” Milton left school at the end of
1624, when he was sixteen; as Mr. Masson says, as scholarly, as
accomplished, and as handsome a youth as St. Paul's School has sent
forth. ” Early in the following year he entered Christ's College, Cam-
bridge. It has been supposed that his career at college was not a
happy one; and there was a story, now discarded, to which Johnson
lent some kind of countenance, from which it appeared that he was
one of the last students of the university to undergo corporal pun-
ishment. He was of a rebellious disposition, and may have found
much to condemn both in the system of instruction then followed
in the university and in his instructors. There is also evidence that
the «lady of Christ's College,” as he was termed in allusion to his
beauty and the purity of his morals, was not popular with his fellow
collegians. He however took his degree in due course, and remained
at the university some years after graduation. Among the incidents
of his college life was his friendship with Edward King, the young
poet celebrated in Lycidas. ' He added French, Italian, and Hebrew
to the university Greek and Latin; and he became an expert swords-
man.
It was in 1632, at the end of his seven years' life at Cambridge,
that he went to live with his father, who had just removed from
## p. 10038 (#458) ##########################################
10038
JOHN MILTON
(
London to the small village of Horton in Buckinghamshire, not far
from Windsor. The idea with which he entered college, that of being
a priest, had been abandoned, and he had decided upon a life devoted
to learning and the pursuit of literature. He lived at Horton for the
next six years. At Horton he wrote, besides other poetry, L'Allegro,'
(Il Penseroso, Comus,' and 'Lycidas. ' 'Comus,' like much of his
poetry, was the result of an occasion. The musician Lawes, who was
his friend, had been employed to write a masque to be played at
Lord Bridgewater's place in Wales; and for this entertainment Milton
wrote the words. There is perhaps not in all our literature so per-
fect an expression as “Comus of the beauty of a youthful mind filled
with lofty principles; and this quality of the poem is all the more
impressive, because we know that the ideals cherished in those days
of hope and health and lettered enthusiasm are to be re-asserted with
deeper emphasis amid the tragic circumstances of the closing period
of his career. It was the loss of his friend Edward King, by the
foundering of a ship in the Irish Channel, which was the occasion of
Lycidas,' a poem which is throughout a treasury of literary beauty.
His mother died in 1637, and his brother and his wife came to
live with his father; and Milton now felt that he might carry out
his long-contemplated project of a journey to Italy. He started upon
this journey in 1637, and passed fifteen months on the Continent. This
period was one of the brightest of his life, and is one of the most
pleasing chapters of literary biography. After having visited Paris,
Florence, Rome, Naples, and Geneva, at all of which places he was
received with a distinction and kindness due more, no doubt, to his
character and accomplishments and his engaging personal qualities
than to his fame, which could not at that time have been great,- he
retu ned to England. It was the alarming state of affairs at home
which determined him to bring this charming episode of his career
to an end. The words in which he stated the motive for this decision
are significant of the abrupt change which was about to take place
in his life:–«I considered it to be dishonorable to be enjoying myself
at my ease in foreign lands while my countrymen were striking a
blow for freedom. ”
On reaching England he went to live in London, receiving into
his house as pupils his two nephews and some other boys, to whom
he gave instruction. He of course continued his life of study; but
he wrote no poetry. His exertions from now on to the time of the
Restoration were to be mainly those of the pamphleteer and the poli-
tician. In the ranks of the triumphant party, which had successfully
.
opposed the purposes of Charles and Laud, there had arisen several
divisions, mainly over the question of Episcopacy. Milton belonged
to what was termed the “root and branch party,” which wished to
## p. 10039 (#459) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON
10039
$
do away with the bishops altogether. In answer to a manifesto
published by the High Church division of the party, five Puritan min-
isters had issued a pamphlet signed “Smectymnuus,"— a word made
up of the initials of its five authors. Milton wrote during 1641 and
1642 a number of pamphlets in support of the views of this party.
In 1643 he issued a pamphlet the motive of which was chiefly per-
sonal. In May of that year he had taken a journey into the country,
and had brought back with him a wife. She was Mary Powell, a
girl of seventeen, the daughter of a Royalist gentleman of Oxford-
shire. The honeymoon was scarcely over before the young girl, who
had found the abode of the Puritan scholar not so pl asant a place
to live as the free and easy cavalier house in Oxfordshire, went to
her family on a visit; and Milton was presently informed that she
had no intention of returning. It was in the following August that
he wrote his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' in which he
attacked the accepted views of marriage, and expressed the hope that
Parliament would legislate for the relief of persons in his situation.
This, of course, Parliament failed to do; and Milton made few con-
verts to his views upon this subject, although among the numer-
ous sects of the day there was one known as Miltonists or Divorcers.
In 1645 Milton's wife returned to him. The triumph of the Puritan
party had brought ruin to her family. Milton received into his house
the entire family, twelve in all, including the mother-in-law, who had
been the chief cause of the quarrel. Mary Powell was the mother of
his three children. She died nine years later.
In 1644 Milton published, without a license, a second edition of
his pamphlet on Divorce. ) The criticisms made upon this disre-
gard of the license law resulted in his writing, in the same year, his
famous Areopagitica, perhaps the most magnificent and the most
known and admired of all his prose writings. There now seems
to have succeeded a period of inactivity, which lasted till 1649. On
January 30th of that year the King was beheaded, and within a fort-
night Milton published a pamphlet in defense of the act.
have been owing to his having written this pamphlet that he was, in
the following month, made Latin Secretary to the Council of State,
which governed the country. His business in this new office was
to translate from and into Latin the communications received from
abroad by the Council, and those sent in reply. But he had other
duties, of an indefinite character. One was that of official pam-
phleteer for the new government, in which capacity he was to defend
it from its critics at home and abroad. If the Irish Presbyterians
attacked the government, Milton, who belonged to the Independents
and favored toleration, must answer them in behalf of Cromwell and
his Council, who were also Independents. His special duty, however,
proved to be that of replying to assaults made in the interests of the
It may
## p. 10040 (#460) ##########################################
10040
JOHN MILTON
monarchy. When the Eikon Basilike' (Royal Image) was published,
a pamphlet believed to be written by the King, the Council directed
Milton to reply. This he did in the Eikonoklastes (Image Breaker).
Charles II. was at that time living at The Hague, and he employed
the learned Salmasius, the great ornament of the University of Ley-
den, to write a defense of his father. Milton, having been ordered
by the Council to answer Salmasius, wrote his Defense of the Eng-
lish People. ' His labors in preparing this pamphlet were the cause
of his blindness. He had been warned by his doctor that such would
be the result, but he considered it to be his duty to make a deliber-
ate sacrifice of his eyesight in the fulfillment of this task. He thus
became blind at the age of forty-three. Another monograph, Regii
Sanguinis Clamor) (Cry of the Royal Blood), having been issued from
The Hague, Milton wrote his ‘Second Defense '— a paper of extraor-
dinary interest and eloquence, spoiled however by fanaticism, and
by a simplicity of combativeness which at times seems to approach
the borders of puerility. We get some idea of the heroic elements
and proportions of the scene which it discloses, when we hear the
blind sage and patriot exclaim of Cromwell that he had either
extinguished, or by habit had learned to subdue, the whole host of
vain hopes, fears, and passions which infest the soul. ” One incident
of Milton's domestic life during this period should be mentioned: in
1656 he had married Katherine Woodcock, the late espoused saint
of the sonnet, and with her had fifteen months of great happiness,
which her death terminated. The aspect of public affairs soon began,
from Milton's point of view, to darken. From the time of Oliver's
death the tide of reaction was setting in, bearing irresistibly in the
direction of a return of the monarchy. This result Milton set him-
self to the work of fighting with desperate energy. It is interesting
to see that his proposal for the cure of the disorders of the time was
the establishment of some such scheme of federal government as
was destined more than a century later to be devised in the Consti-
tution of the United States. How Milton succeeded in escaping the
scaffold, after the Restoration had been accomplished, is not clear.
But his escape was probably due to his literary eminence and to the
secret services of friends and admirers. He was for a time in hiding,
but from 1660 was without fear of molestation. He was then indeed
“fallen on evil days. ” Besides his public causes of unhappiness, he
was miserable at home. He found himself neglected by daughters
whom he had failed to educate. He was not a worldly-wise man,
nor a man of common worldly prudence: witness many facts of his
life,- such, for instance, as his thinking that an article was worth
the sacrifice of his eyes, and his scheme of education founded on the
belief that any boy could do what he did at school. In 1663 Milton
married his third wife, a woman thirty years younger than himself, -
## p. 10041 (#461) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON
10041
were
a marriage which proved fortunate.
In his loneliness he was still
visited by a few friends who were faithful to him, such as Andrew
Marvell and Cyriac Skinner.
It was this period of his life which he occupied with the composi-
tion of Paradise Lost. ' During the long interval which had elapsed
since (Lycidas,' Milton's only poems had been the sonnets; which,
among the noblest poems of our language as they are, relate chiefly
to the incidents of the political life in which he was throughout
that time immersed. In 1658, the last year of Cromwell's Protector-
ate, Milton had taken up Paradise Lost. But the beginnings of the
work far antedate that time. As early as 1638 he had determined
to make the composition of a great poem the chief work of his life.
His intention at that time was to take the subject of the poem from
the legend of King Arthur. In 1640-42 he was debating the subject
and manner of the poem. More than ninety possible themes — the
greater part of them Biblical, although some were historical-
considered by him. After his selection of the theme of Paradise
Lost' as the subject, his first intention was that the form of the
poem should be dramatic. About 1642 he worked upon parts of it.
Satan's Address to the Sun as written at that time, and repeated
by Milton to his nephew, Edward Philips. When in 1658 the poem
was resumed, it was under the epic form. It was finished in 1665
and published in 1666.
It is not possible within the limits of this article to attempt a
description or criticism of Paradise Lost. " It is of course one of
the world's great epics. The drama and story are of the grandest,
especially in the first two books, and the entire subject and scenery
of the work have entered into and profoundly influenced the mind
of the English-speaking world. Nevertheless a story which concerns
spirits is at a disadvantage by the side of stories which concern men,
as the other great epics do. To most readers the work is perhaps
lyrical rather than epic; a wonderful strain of music, rising now and
again into still grander harmonies, rather than a relation of inci-
dents. It is the splendid bursts of poetry scattered through the
work, and expressing the mind of the poet, that interest us
more than the story. The poet himself is as much before us as in
his more strictly lyrical productions. He is never absent from our
thoughts. Thus, when the newly erected Pandemonium is likened to
the pipes of an organ, we have before us the blind musician of the
little house in Jewin Street. When we find the gods of Olympus
among the hosts of hell, it is with a feeling of regret to see the
friends of the young scholar of Horton in such company. What else
than the most beautiful lyric poetry is the pathetic opening of the
third book?
even
## p. 10042 (#462) ##########################################
10042
JOHN MILTON
A word should be said of the scheme of the physical universe
which the story of Paradise Lost' supposes. How is it that Satan
in going from hell to earth at one time flies downward ? How is it
that in this journey he passes the gate of heaven ? Milton supposes
all space to be divided into two halves, an upper and a lower, the
upper heaven and the lower chaos. From the floor of heaven is hung
our starry universe, a hollow sphere with a hard crust, with the earth
in the centre and the sun and stars revolving round it. It was so
our starry universe (solar system, as we should now call it) was
regarded by the Ptolemaic astronomy, which Milton selected as the
cosmogony of Paradise Lost. ' When Satan and his angels are cast
out of heaven they fall to the bottom of chaos and are there inclosed
in hell, which is roofed over. Between heaven and hell is the rest
of chaos. Our starry universe, as has been said, hangs from the floor
of heaven near the gate of heaven. At this point there is a hole in
the crust of our universe, which is the place of entrance to it. Satan
gets out of hell, finds his way through chaos, passes near the gate of
heaven, enters the aperture in the crust of our universe, and thence
drops to the earth.
It was Ellwood, the young Quaker to whom Milton had shown
(Paradise Lost,' who suggested Paradise Regained. He said to Mil-
ton on returning the MS. , « Thou hast said much here of Paradise
Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found? ) Ellwood, in
relating the interview, says, “He made no answer, but sat some
time in a muse. " It is probable that at this time Milton conceived
the idea of writing Paradise Regained. ' This was published in
1671. It is a poem upon which its author set great store; and which,
whatever may be its deficiencies, has great beauties. It is especially
a correct poem, very devoid of ornament. (Samson Agonistes,' the
concluding poem of his life, has a sad autobiographical interest as
the poem of his old age. To that old age many elements of sad-
ness contributed. Blind and ill, neglected by his daughters at home,
he was witnessing the triumph without of the enemies of all he held
sacred. The poem is an exact picture of such an old age.
In speaking of Milton's literary characteristics, it is natural to
mention first the subject of style, in which he is perhaps the great-
est of English writers. He has that power, which only the greatest
poets have, of commanding a beautiful style, no matter what may be
the nature of the subject. It should, of course, be within the power
of a true poet to write well upon a theme which is of a character
to awaken his feeling and imagination; for the excited feeling then
prompts him to a style worthy of the subject. But to write in a
fine style upon themes which are not in their nature dignified is far
more difficult. It is done only by the great poets. It is no doubt
## p. 10043 (#463) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON
10043
true that Milton does not have occasion to exhibit this power as often
as Homer and Virgil. But when the occasion comes, he is equal to
it. It does not seem to be in his power to speak meanly or weakly.
Even in passages where the subject is not only not poetical but
seems to border upon the ridiculous,- as for instance, that in which
he describes the inhabitants of hell as having the capacity to reduce
their bulk at will to the smallest dimensions, - even in such passages
the style does not falter. When we come to his manner of expres-
sion in treating great subjects, we find a dignity, a splendor, and a
grace which are unequaled in English literature. In particular, there
is a loveliness of elegance in which no English poet approaches him.
Here he is unique; and like
« That self-begotten bird
In Arabian woods embost,"
the pages.
>
of (Samson Agonistes, “no second knows nor third. ” A hundred
examples crowd upon the memory or disclose themselves as we turn
It is perhaps better, by the way, not to know such pass-
ages by heart; since a verbal familiarity with them may deprive you
of that surprise with which the mind at each fresh perusal recog-
nizes their incomparable, their almost miraculous felicity.
Matthew Arnold, the English writer of our day who has had the
best things to say upon literature, has selected Milton as the one Eng-
lish poet whose style resembles what he calls the “grand style," as
seen in the great epic poets of antiquity and in Dante, and through
whom the great mass of English readers must know that style
if they are to know it at all. This resemblance may be due in part
to the fact that Milton's mind had been deeply influenced by the
study of these great models. It is certainly true that no other Eng-
lish poetry so suggests the spirit of antiquity as his does. The result
of his studies had been to infuse a classic essence into his words
and sentences. A similar education has produced a similar quality
in other English poets; in Gray, for instance,- the English poet
who in this respect most resembles him. Milton was deeply versed
in ancient literature, because in his time that was the chief liter-
ature; and he had great devotion to literature and profound faith in
it. Literature was for him education rather than acquisition. For
mere extent of reading he had no great respect, nor did he consider
books interesting and valuable because written in an antique tongue.
He wisely selected from among the writings of all time the worthiest
and best, and diligently studied them; bringing to the appreciation
of them the powers of his profound nature. He had indeed a special
practical aim in these studies. They were pursued with a conscious
purpose of fitting him for the work of poetry. To literature he went
rather than to the world and nature for this preparation, although of
## p. 10044 (#464) ##########################################
10044
JOHN MILTON
course he was a student of both. He indeed considers them to be in
a sense one and the same; for he says, “Whichever thing we see
or hear sitting, walking, traveling, or conversing, may be fitly called
our book. ” The result of his absorption in literature is that he sees
everything by the light of literature, even nature. He does not seem
to look at nature directly and immediately, but rather as remembered
in the library. Thus, Milton's sun is not the sun as Shakespeare
saw it, as in "Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. ”
Take for instance this passage, of such richness and splendor,— which,
by the way, came near being lost to us because the censor of the
Restoration hesitated at the suggestion of monarchs being perplexed:
“As when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. »
Here we have the sun indeed, but the sun as seen through the
medium of literature and history. A very accomplished man to whom
I had mentioned this characteristic of Milton (it has no doubt been
observed by many writers on Milton, — by Pattison, among the rest)
thought it was to be noticed in his later writings, and was due to
blindness; but not in the earlier writings. As to blindness, surely
even when blind, Milton might yet see with the eye of memory and
imagination. «Yet not the more cease I to wander where the Muses
haunt clear spring,” etc. But I find the same characteristic in the
earlier poems.
This description of the sun from Lycidas' - one of
the finest passages of the poem (what lovely vagueness in the phrase
“ repairs his drooping head”! ) — is not so much the real sun
sun reflected from the mirror of literature and art:-
as the
“So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. ”
>>
Even those “high lawns” which appeared under the opening eyelids
of the morn are not so much beheld with the direct vision as seen
through some ethereal medium of the poet's fancy, under the influ-
ence of a literary and classic enchantment. It should not, however,
be thought that Milton contradicts nature. This indeed has been
charged. His description of the pine as rooted deep as high,” when
that tree does not send its roots deep into the ground, and his use
of the beautiful epithet “star-proof as applied to the elm, which
has not a thick foliage, have been said to indicate an eye inattentive
## p. 10045 (#465) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON
10045
to nature. But a poet is not of necessity a naturalist. Poets differ
greatly in their manner of looking at nature. Milton Saw nature
closely enough for his purposes and for our enjoyment. We think
there can be no question that in going to literature for his prepara-
tion, he chose the best education for himself. Had he not done so,
we might have lost the most perfect of English literary artists with-
out gaining a great poet of nature and the world. His chief strength
did not lie in the portraiture of the visible world, whether of nature
or humanity. We have seen his manner of regarding nature; at man
he looked rather with the disposition of the priest than of the dra-
matic or epic poet. He had not the variety and humor, the play of
mind, the pliant and many-sided sympathies, of that English poet in
whose pages nature and the world were already mirrored.
Milton's prose has the greatness of his verse,- the same greatness
both of style and mind. The style often has a splendid way of ad-
vancing; the reader having the same sense of buoyant and powerful
movement which he feels when he commits himself to the full tide
and river of the verse. It is true that the prose has not the exqui-
site care of the verse. The language is frequently difficult. The
sentence sometimes runs down a good part of the page; and if you
would understand it, you must first go through the labor of find-
ing subject and predicate, and correctly distinguishing principal and
subordinate clauses. It does not often happen, however, that this
is necessary; and even when it is necessary, the result is of course
well worth the labor. That cloth of gold,” as Macaulay termed it,
“
is thick with imagery, passion, thought, and splendid phrases. As one
reads, one gets very near to the greatness of the man's intellect and
nature, — to his heroic ardor, — and very near to some qualities which
whether great or not, are surely not to be applauded. We see also
much of him in one character in which he less often appears in
verse, - that of the satirist. There was in Milton the making of a
satirist like Juvenal or Swift; for he had that insight into mind which
is a chief condition of satire. The writer of this paper was once
taken to task for having expressed the opinion that Byron had not
the insight or weight of mind for satire,- that his greatness lay
elsewhere than in the intellect. Now Milton, to my thinking, had
the constitution of mind fitted to write satire. He could see a state
of mind, seize it, and hold it in his strong imagination as in a vise.
It is for this reason that his phrases cut to the bone as they do.
The point of the blade is infinitely fine and sharp, but there is in
the implement immense weight and force. Another characteristic
of Milton's prose is that the thought is frequently more novel than
that of his verse, which tends rather to the expression with unequal
perfection of truths that are universal and important, and for that
reason have been often uttered.
## p. 10045 (#466) ##########################################
7, sic
{$.
E.
## p. 10045 (#467) ##########################################
MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONT ST.
GILES
## p. 10045 (#468) ##########################################
10046
JOHN MILTON
From the time of the publication of Paradise Lost' till his death
in 1674, Milton seemed to enjoy, so far as his afflictions and the
public prejudice against him would permit, a kind of Indian summer,
such as sometimes comes at the close of the lives of celebrated men.
The astonishment produced by the work was very great; although
one would think that anything might have been expected from the
author of the earlier poems, of which an edition had been published
in 1645. The accounts we have of the personal appearance, manners,
habits, etc. , of Milton date mostly from this time. We know from
the touching vanity of the allusion to the subject in his (Second
Defense) that his eyes were “externally uninjured”; his answer to
the indecent taunts of his antagonists being :— «They shine with an
unclouded light, like the eyes of one whose vision is perfect. ” That
insults could pass between men of education upon such a subject,
seems to indicate that men's hearts and manners have got gentler
with the spread and advance of that democratic civilization of which
Milton was one of the chief friends and leaders. The accounts of
the time, given by Mr. Masson, describe him as led about the street
near his Bunhill house, a slender man, slightly under middle height,
dressed in a gray cloak and wearing sometimes a small silver-hilted
sword; looking in feeble health, but with his fair complexion and
lightish hair, younger than he was. He was to be seen sitting in his
garden near the door in warm weather, wearing a gray overcoat.
Within doors his dress was neat black. He rose very early, giving
his mornings to study and writing. Music was his chief afternoon
and evening relaxation. « His manner with friends and visitors. ”
says Mr. Masson, was extremely courteous and affable, with just a
shade of stateliness. ” Nevertheless there was a marked tendency in
his talk to be sarcastic and satirical. He had a habit of pronouncing
hard the letter r, the litera canina of the Romans, a characteristic
which Dryden thought "a sure sign of a satirical disposition. ” In
these days his house was frequented by persons of learning and
rank, it is said, “much more than he did desire. ” Up to the time of
his death he was a diligent student and writer. It is scarcely neces-
sary to enumerate the prose writings with which Milton occupied
himself in the years just previous to his death. An incident of the
last year of his life, 1674, was the rearrangement of Paradise Lost'
into twelve books, in the place of the original ten in which it was
first published. He died on November 8th of that year, which was a
Sunday, and was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, by
the side of his father.
E. s. nodal
1
## p. 10045 (#469) ##########################################
## p. 10045 (#470) ##########################################
. .
## p. 10045 (#471) ##########################################
MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONT ST GILES
## p. 10045 (#472) ##########################################
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## p. 10045 (#473) ##########################################
MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONY ST.
GILES
## p. 10046 (#474) ##########################################
## p. 10047 (#475) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON
10047
ON SHAKESPEARE
W"
THAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in pilèd stones ?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
ON HIS BLINDNESS
WHEN
HEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent 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, light denied ? ”
I fondly ask.
But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, «God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait. ”
TO CYRIACK SKINNER
С
YRIACK, this three-years' day these eyes, - though
clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot, -
Bereft of light their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
## p. 10048 (#476) ##########################################
10048
JOHN MILTON
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In Liberty's defense,- my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.
ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT
A
VENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, 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 Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
THE HYMN ON THE NATIVITY
I"
T WAS the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies:
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize;
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She wooes the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
## p. 10049 (#477) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON
10049
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw:
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war or battle's sound
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hooked chariot stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
10032
JOAQUIN MILLER
What banners streamed above these seas?
And what strange seamen answered back
To other sea-king's beck and hail,
That blew across his foamy track ?
Sought Jason here the golden fleece ?
Came Trojan ship or ships of Greece ?
Came decks dark-manned from sultry Ind,
Wooed here by spacious wooing wind, -
So like a grand, sweet woman, when
A great love moves her soul to men ?
Came here strong ships of Solomon
In quest of Ophir by Cathay?
Sit down and dream of seas withdrawn,
And every sea-breath drawn away -
Sit down, sit down!
What is the good
That we go on still fashioning
Great iron ships or walls of wood,
High masts of oak, or anything?
Lo! all things moving must go by.
The sea lies dead. Behold, this land
Sits desolate in dust beside
His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand;
The very clouds have wept and died,
And only God is in the sky.
KIT CARSON'S RIDE
From (Songs of the Sierras )
UN? Now you bet you; I rather guess so!
But he's blind as a badger. Whoa, Paché boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn't believe it to look at his eyes,
But he is badger-blind, and it happened this wise: -
R
We lay in the grasses and the sunburnt clover,
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, to where our lodges lay,
One broad and unbroken sea of brown,
Awaiting the curtains of night to come down
## p. 10033 (#449) ##########################################
JOAQUIN MILLER
10033
To cover us over and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.
We lounged in the grasses — her eyes were in mine,
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine
In its wealth and its flood, pouring on and all over
Her bosom wine-red, and pressed never by one;
And her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover
Burnt brown as it reached to the kiss of the sun;
And her words were as low as the lute-throated dove,
And as laden with love as the heart when it beats
In its hot eager answer to earliest love,
Or a bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets.
We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride;
And the heavens of blue and the harvest of brown
And beautiful clover were welded as one,
To the right and the left, in the light of the sun. *
(Forty full miles if a foot to ride,
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils
Of red Camanches are hot on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon,” muttered bearded old Revels
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerked at his steed,
And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground;
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed:-
Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,
And speed you if ever for life you would speed,
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And feet of wild horses hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking high on the shore;
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire. ”
We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, cinched them on, cinched them over again,
XVII-628
## p. 10034 (#450) ##########################################
10034
JOAQUIN MILLER
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheers,
Cut away tapidaros, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the catenas red-spangled with gold,
And gold-mounted Colts, the companions of years,
Cast the silken serapes to the wind in a breath,
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse –
As bare as when born, as when new from the hand
Of God — without word, or one word of command.
Turned head to the Brazos in a red race with death,
Turned head to the Brazos with a breath in the hair
Blowing hot from a king leaving death in his course;
Turned head to the Brazos with a sound in the air
Like the rush of an army, and a flash in the eye
Of a red wall of fire reaching up to the sky,
Stretching fierce in pursuit of a black rolling sea
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free
And afar from the desert blew hollow and hoarse.
Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall;
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look nor low call
Of love-note or courage: but on o'er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we nose and gray nose,
Reaching long, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows;
Yet we broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer;
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.
Gray nose to gray nose, and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the arid earth rang,
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles! — thirty miles! - a dim distant speck -
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight,
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right -
But Revels was gone: I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
To right and to left the black buffalo came,
A terrible surf on a red sea of flame
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher.
## p. 10035 (#451) ##########################################
JOAQUIN MILLER
10035
And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud
And unearthly, and up through its lowering cloud
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire,
While his keen crooked horns, through the storm of his mane,
Like black lances lifted and lifted again;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through,
And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two.
I looked to my left then - and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs;
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes,
With a longing and love, yet a look of despair
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking steed faltered, his eager ears fell
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck's swell
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fell as dead.
Then she saw sturdy Paché still lorded his head,
With a look of delight; for nor courage nor bribe,
Nor aught but my bride, could have brought him to me.
For he was her father's, and at South Santafee
Had once won a whole herd, sweeping everything down
In a race where the world came to run for the crown.
And so when I won the true heart of my bride, -
My neighbor's and deadliest enemy's child,
And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe,-
She brought me this steed to the border the night
She met Revels and me in her perilous flight
From the lodge of the chief to the North Brazos side;
And said, so half guessing of ill as she smiled,
As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride
The fleet-footed Paché, so if kin should pursue
I should surely escape without other ado
Than to ride, without blood, to the North Brazos side,
And await her — and wait till the next hollow moon
Hung her horns in the palms, when surely and soon
And swift she would join me, and all would be well
Without bloodshed or word. And now as she fell
From the front, and went down in the ocean of fire,
The last that I saw was a look of delight
That I should escape – a love — a desire -
## p. 10036 (#452) ##########################################
10036
JOAQUIN MILLER
Yet never a word, not one look of appeal,
Lest I should reach hand, should stay hand or stay heel
One instant for her in my terrible flight.
Then the rushing of fire around me and under,
And the howling of beasts and a sound as of thunder -
Beasts burning and blind and forced onward and over,
As the passionate flame reached around them, and wove her
Red hands in their hair, and kissed hot till they died -
Till they died with a wild and a desolate moan,
As a sea heart-broken on the hard brown stone;
And into the Brazos I rode all alone
All alone, save only a horse long-limbed,
And blinded and bare and burnt to the skin.
Then just as the terrible sea came in
And tumbled its thousands hot into the tide,
Till the tide blocked up and the swift stream brimmed
In eddies, we struck on the opposite side.
*
Sell Paché - blind Paché? Now, mister, look here:
You have slept in my tent and partook of my cheer
Many days, many days, on this rugged frontier,
For the ways they are rough and Camanches were near;
But you'd better pack up, sir! That tent is too small
For us two after this! Has an old mountaineer,
Do you book-men believe, got no tum-tum at all ?
Sell Paché! - you buy him! - a bag full of gold ! -
You show him ! - tell of him the tale I have told!
Why, he bore me through fire, and is blind, and is old! -
Now pack up your papers, and get up and spin
To them cities you tell of — Blast you and your tin!
## p. 10036 (#453) ##########################################
## p. 10036 (#454) ##########################################
JOHN MILTON.
## p. 10036 (#455) ##########################################
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## p. 10036 (#456) ##########################################
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JOHN MILTUN
## p. 10037 (#457) ##########################################
10037
JOHN MILTON
(1607-1674)
BY E. S. NADAL
M
((
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ILTON was born in London, on December 9th, 1607; the son of
John Milton, who had amassed a competency as a scrivener.
The elder Milton, besides his professional success, attained
to considerable eminence as a musician. This talent, we know, de-
scended to his son; and it may be that this inheritance had some
bearing upon the genius of the poet, who was gifted with perhaps the
finest ear possessed by any English writer, and whom critics have
described as musical rather than a picturesque poet. Milton tells us
that he was instructed early, both at grammar schools and by private
masters, as my age would suffer. ” It was at St. Paul's School, how-
ever, which he had entered by the year 1620, that he began that
career of diligent study which he was to pursue through life. " From
my twelfth year of age,” he says, “I scarcely ever went from my
studies to bed before midnight. ” Milton left school at the end of
1624, when he was sixteen; as Mr. Masson says, as scholarly, as
accomplished, and as handsome a youth as St. Paul's School has sent
forth. ” Early in the following year he entered Christ's College, Cam-
bridge. It has been supposed that his career at college was not a
happy one; and there was a story, now discarded, to which Johnson
lent some kind of countenance, from which it appeared that he was
one of the last students of the university to undergo corporal pun-
ishment. He was of a rebellious disposition, and may have found
much to condemn both in the system of instruction then followed
in the university and in his instructors. There is also evidence that
the «lady of Christ's College,” as he was termed in allusion to his
beauty and the purity of his morals, was not popular with his fellow
collegians. He however took his degree in due course, and remained
at the university some years after graduation. Among the incidents
of his college life was his friendship with Edward King, the young
poet celebrated in Lycidas. ' He added French, Italian, and Hebrew
to the university Greek and Latin; and he became an expert swords-
man.
It was in 1632, at the end of his seven years' life at Cambridge,
that he went to live with his father, who had just removed from
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JOHN MILTON
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London to the small village of Horton in Buckinghamshire, not far
from Windsor. The idea with which he entered college, that of being
a priest, had been abandoned, and he had decided upon a life devoted
to learning and the pursuit of literature. He lived at Horton for the
next six years. At Horton he wrote, besides other poetry, L'Allegro,'
(Il Penseroso, Comus,' and 'Lycidas. ' 'Comus,' like much of his
poetry, was the result of an occasion. The musician Lawes, who was
his friend, had been employed to write a masque to be played at
Lord Bridgewater's place in Wales; and for this entertainment Milton
wrote the words. There is perhaps not in all our literature so per-
fect an expression as “Comus of the beauty of a youthful mind filled
with lofty principles; and this quality of the poem is all the more
impressive, because we know that the ideals cherished in those days
of hope and health and lettered enthusiasm are to be re-asserted with
deeper emphasis amid the tragic circumstances of the closing period
of his career. It was the loss of his friend Edward King, by the
foundering of a ship in the Irish Channel, which was the occasion of
Lycidas,' a poem which is throughout a treasury of literary beauty.
His mother died in 1637, and his brother and his wife came to
live with his father; and Milton now felt that he might carry out
his long-contemplated project of a journey to Italy. He started upon
this journey in 1637, and passed fifteen months on the Continent. This
period was one of the brightest of his life, and is one of the most
pleasing chapters of literary biography. After having visited Paris,
Florence, Rome, Naples, and Geneva, at all of which places he was
received with a distinction and kindness due more, no doubt, to his
character and accomplishments and his engaging personal qualities
than to his fame, which could not at that time have been great,- he
retu ned to England. It was the alarming state of affairs at home
which determined him to bring this charming episode of his career
to an end. The words in which he stated the motive for this decision
are significant of the abrupt change which was about to take place
in his life:–«I considered it to be dishonorable to be enjoying myself
at my ease in foreign lands while my countrymen were striking a
blow for freedom. ”
On reaching England he went to live in London, receiving into
his house as pupils his two nephews and some other boys, to whom
he gave instruction. He of course continued his life of study; but
he wrote no poetry. His exertions from now on to the time of the
Restoration were to be mainly those of the pamphleteer and the poli-
tician. In the ranks of the triumphant party, which had successfully
.
opposed the purposes of Charles and Laud, there had arisen several
divisions, mainly over the question of Episcopacy. Milton belonged
to what was termed the “root and branch party,” which wished to
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JOHN MILTON
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do away with the bishops altogether. In answer to a manifesto
published by the High Church division of the party, five Puritan min-
isters had issued a pamphlet signed “Smectymnuus,"— a word made
up of the initials of its five authors. Milton wrote during 1641 and
1642 a number of pamphlets in support of the views of this party.
In 1643 he issued a pamphlet the motive of which was chiefly per-
sonal. In May of that year he had taken a journey into the country,
and had brought back with him a wife. She was Mary Powell, a
girl of seventeen, the daughter of a Royalist gentleman of Oxford-
shire. The honeymoon was scarcely over before the young girl, who
had found the abode of the Puritan scholar not so pl asant a place
to live as the free and easy cavalier house in Oxfordshire, went to
her family on a visit; and Milton was presently informed that she
had no intention of returning. It was in the following August that
he wrote his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' in which he
attacked the accepted views of marriage, and expressed the hope that
Parliament would legislate for the relief of persons in his situation.
This, of course, Parliament failed to do; and Milton made few con-
verts to his views upon this subject, although among the numer-
ous sects of the day there was one known as Miltonists or Divorcers.
In 1645 Milton's wife returned to him. The triumph of the Puritan
party had brought ruin to her family. Milton received into his house
the entire family, twelve in all, including the mother-in-law, who had
been the chief cause of the quarrel. Mary Powell was the mother of
his three children. She died nine years later.
In 1644 Milton published, without a license, a second edition of
his pamphlet on Divorce. ) The criticisms made upon this disre-
gard of the license law resulted in his writing, in the same year, his
famous Areopagitica, perhaps the most magnificent and the most
known and admired of all his prose writings. There now seems
to have succeeded a period of inactivity, which lasted till 1649. On
January 30th of that year the King was beheaded, and within a fort-
night Milton published a pamphlet in defense of the act.
have been owing to his having written this pamphlet that he was, in
the following month, made Latin Secretary to the Council of State,
which governed the country. His business in this new office was
to translate from and into Latin the communications received from
abroad by the Council, and those sent in reply. But he had other
duties, of an indefinite character. One was that of official pam-
phleteer for the new government, in which capacity he was to defend
it from its critics at home and abroad. If the Irish Presbyterians
attacked the government, Milton, who belonged to the Independents
and favored toleration, must answer them in behalf of Cromwell and
his Council, who were also Independents. His special duty, however,
proved to be that of replying to assaults made in the interests of the
It may
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JOHN MILTON
monarchy. When the Eikon Basilike' (Royal Image) was published,
a pamphlet believed to be written by the King, the Council directed
Milton to reply. This he did in the Eikonoklastes (Image Breaker).
Charles II. was at that time living at The Hague, and he employed
the learned Salmasius, the great ornament of the University of Ley-
den, to write a defense of his father. Milton, having been ordered
by the Council to answer Salmasius, wrote his Defense of the Eng-
lish People. ' His labors in preparing this pamphlet were the cause
of his blindness. He had been warned by his doctor that such would
be the result, but he considered it to be his duty to make a deliber-
ate sacrifice of his eyesight in the fulfillment of this task. He thus
became blind at the age of forty-three. Another monograph, Regii
Sanguinis Clamor) (Cry of the Royal Blood), having been issued from
The Hague, Milton wrote his ‘Second Defense '— a paper of extraor-
dinary interest and eloquence, spoiled however by fanaticism, and
by a simplicity of combativeness which at times seems to approach
the borders of puerility. We get some idea of the heroic elements
and proportions of the scene which it discloses, when we hear the
blind sage and patriot exclaim of Cromwell that he had either
extinguished, or by habit had learned to subdue, the whole host of
vain hopes, fears, and passions which infest the soul. ” One incident
of Milton's domestic life during this period should be mentioned: in
1656 he had married Katherine Woodcock, the late espoused saint
of the sonnet, and with her had fifteen months of great happiness,
which her death terminated. The aspect of public affairs soon began,
from Milton's point of view, to darken. From the time of Oliver's
death the tide of reaction was setting in, bearing irresistibly in the
direction of a return of the monarchy. This result Milton set him-
self to the work of fighting with desperate energy. It is interesting
to see that his proposal for the cure of the disorders of the time was
the establishment of some such scheme of federal government as
was destined more than a century later to be devised in the Consti-
tution of the United States. How Milton succeeded in escaping the
scaffold, after the Restoration had been accomplished, is not clear.
But his escape was probably due to his literary eminence and to the
secret services of friends and admirers. He was for a time in hiding,
but from 1660 was without fear of molestation. He was then indeed
“fallen on evil days. ” Besides his public causes of unhappiness, he
was miserable at home. He found himself neglected by daughters
whom he had failed to educate. He was not a worldly-wise man,
nor a man of common worldly prudence: witness many facts of his
life,- such, for instance, as his thinking that an article was worth
the sacrifice of his eyes, and his scheme of education founded on the
belief that any boy could do what he did at school. In 1663 Milton
married his third wife, a woman thirty years younger than himself, -
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JOHN MILTON
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were
a marriage which proved fortunate.
In his loneliness he was still
visited by a few friends who were faithful to him, such as Andrew
Marvell and Cyriac Skinner.
It was this period of his life which he occupied with the composi-
tion of Paradise Lost. ' During the long interval which had elapsed
since (Lycidas,' Milton's only poems had been the sonnets; which,
among the noblest poems of our language as they are, relate chiefly
to the incidents of the political life in which he was throughout
that time immersed. In 1658, the last year of Cromwell's Protector-
ate, Milton had taken up Paradise Lost. But the beginnings of the
work far antedate that time. As early as 1638 he had determined
to make the composition of a great poem the chief work of his life.
His intention at that time was to take the subject of the poem from
the legend of King Arthur. In 1640-42 he was debating the subject
and manner of the poem. More than ninety possible themes — the
greater part of them Biblical, although some were historical-
considered by him. After his selection of the theme of Paradise
Lost' as the subject, his first intention was that the form of the
poem should be dramatic. About 1642 he worked upon parts of it.
Satan's Address to the Sun as written at that time, and repeated
by Milton to his nephew, Edward Philips. When in 1658 the poem
was resumed, it was under the epic form. It was finished in 1665
and published in 1666.
It is not possible within the limits of this article to attempt a
description or criticism of Paradise Lost. " It is of course one of
the world's great epics. The drama and story are of the grandest,
especially in the first two books, and the entire subject and scenery
of the work have entered into and profoundly influenced the mind
of the English-speaking world. Nevertheless a story which concerns
spirits is at a disadvantage by the side of stories which concern men,
as the other great epics do. To most readers the work is perhaps
lyrical rather than epic; a wonderful strain of music, rising now and
again into still grander harmonies, rather than a relation of inci-
dents. It is the splendid bursts of poetry scattered through the
work, and expressing the mind of the poet, that interest us
more than the story. The poet himself is as much before us as in
his more strictly lyrical productions. He is never absent from our
thoughts. Thus, when the newly erected Pandemonium is likened to
the pipes of an organ, we have before us the blind musician of the
little house in Jewin Street. When we find the gods of Olympus
among the hosts of hell, it is with a feeling of regret to see the
friends of the young scholar of Horton in such company. What else
than the most beautiful lyric poetry is the pathetic opening of the
third book?
even
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JOHN MILTON
A word should be said of the scheme of the physical universe
which the story of Paradise Lost' supposes. How is it that Satan
in going from hell to earth at one time flies downward ? How is it
that in this journey he passes the gate of heaven ? Milton supposes
all space to be divided into two halves, an upper and a lower, the
upper heaven and the lower chaos. From the floor of heaven is hung
our starry universe, a hollow sphere with a hard crust, with the earth
in the centre and the sun and stars revolving round it. It was so
our starry universe (solar system, as we should now call it) was
regarded by the Ptolemaic astronomy, which Milton selected as the
cosmogony of Paradise Lost. ' When Satan and his angels are cast
out of heaven they fall to the bottom of chaos and are there inclosed
in hell, which is roofed over. Between heaven and hell is the rest
of chaos. Our starry universe, as has been said, hangs from the floor
of heaven near the gate of heaven. At this point there is a hole in
the crust of our universe, which is the place of entrance to it. Satan
gets out of hell, finds his way through chaos, passes near the gate of
heaven, enters the aperture in the crust of our universe, and thence
drops to the earth.
It was Ellwood, the young Quaker to whom Milton had shown
(Paradise Lost,' who suggested Paradise Regained. He said to Mil-
ton on returning the MS. , « Thou hast said much here of Paradise
Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found? ) Ellwood, in
relating the interview, says, “He made no answer, but sat some
time in a muse. " It is probable that at this time Milton conceived
the idea of writing Paradise Regained. ' This was published in
1671. It is a poem upon which its author set great store; and which,
whatever may be its deficiencies, has great beauties. It is especially
a correct poem, very devoid of ornament. (Samson Agonistes,' the
concluding poem of his life, has a sad autobiographical interest as
the poem of his old age. To that old age many elements of sad-
ness contributed. Blind and ill, neglected by his daughters at home,
he was witnessing the triumph without of the enemies of all he held
sacred. The poem is an exact picture of such an old age.
In speaking of Milton's literary characteristics, it is natural to
mention first the subject of style, in which he is perhaps the great-
est of English writers. He has that power, which only the greatest
poets have, of commanding a beautiful style, no matter what may be
the nature of the subject. It should, of course, be within the power
of a true poet to write well upon a theme which is of a character
to awaken his feeling and imagination; for the excited feeling then
prompts him to a style worthy of the subject. But to write in a
fine style upon themes which are not in their nature dignified is far
more difficult. It is done only by the great poets. It is no doubt
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true that Milton does not have occasion to exhibit this power as often
as Homer and Virgil. But when the occasion comes, he is equal to
it. It does not seem to be in his power to speak meanly or weakly.
Even in passages where the subject is not only not poetical but
seems to border upon the ridiculous,- as for instance, that in which
he describes the inhabitants of hell as having the capacity to reduce
their bulk at will to the smallest dimensions, - even in such passages
the style does not falter. When we come to his manner of expres-
sion in treating great subjects, we find a dignity, a splendor, and a
grace which are unequaled in English literature. In particular, there
is a loveliness of elegance in which no English poet approaches him.
Here he is unique; and like
« That self-begotten bird
In Arabian woods embost,"
the pages.
>
of (Samson Agonistes, “no second knows nor third. ” A hundred
examples crowd upon the memory or disclose themselves as we turn
It is perhaps better, by the way, not to know such pass-
ages by heart; since a verbal familiarity with them may deprive you
of that surprise with which the mind at each fresh perusal recog-
nizes their incomparable, their almost miraculous felicity.
Matthew Arnold, the English writer of our day who has had the
best things to say upon literature, has selected Milton as the one Eng-
lish poet whose style resembles what he calls the “grand style," as
seen in the great epic poets of antiquity and in Dante, and through
whom the great mass of English readers must know that style
if they are to know it at all. This resemblance may be due in part
to the fact that Milton's mind had been deeply influenced by the
study of these great models. It is certainly true that no other Eng-
lish poetry so suggests the spirit of antiquity as his does. The result
of his studies had been to infuse a classic essence into his words
and sentences. A similar education has produced a similar quality
in other English poets; in Gray, for instance,- the English poet
who in this respect most resembles him. Milton was deeply versed
in ancient literature, because in his time that was the chief liter-
ature; and he had great devotion to literature and profound faith in
it. Literature was for him education rather than acquisition. For
mere extent of reading he had no great respect, nor did he consider
books interesting and valuable because written in an antique tongue.
He wisely selected from among the writings of all time the worthiest
and best, and diligently studied them; bringing to the appreciation
of them the powers of his profound nature. He had indeed a special
practical aim in these studies. They were pursued with a conscious
purpose of fitting him for the work of poetry. To literature he went
rather than to the world and nature for this preparation, although of
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JOHN MILTON
course he was a student of both. He indeed considers them to be in
a sense one and the same; for he says, “Whichever thing we see
or hear sitting, walking, traveling, or conversing, may be fitly called
our book. ” The result of his absorption in literature is that he sees
everything by the light of literature, even nature. He does not seem
to look at nature directly and immediately, but rather as remembered
in the library. Thus, Milton's sun is not the sun as Shakespeare
saw it, as in "Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. ”
Take for instance this passage, of such richness and splendor,— which,
by the way, came near being lost to us because the censor of the
Restoration hesitated at the suggestion of monarchs being perplexed:
“As when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. »
Here we have the sun indeed, but the sun as seen through the
medium of literature and history. A very accomplished man to whom
I had mentioned this characteristic of Milton (it has no doubt been
observed by many writers on Milton, — by Pattison, among the rest)
thought it was to be noticed in his later writings, and was due to
blindness; but not in the earlier writings. As to blindness, surely
even when blind, Milton might yet see with the eye of memory and
imagination. «Yet not the more cease I to wander where the Muses
haunt clear spring,” etc. But I find the same characteristic in the
earlier poems.
This description of the sun from Lycidas' - one of
the finest passages of the poem (what lovely vagueness in the phrase
“ repairs his drooping head”! ) — is not so much the real sun
sun reflected from the mirror of literature and art:-
as the
“So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. ”
>>
Even those “high lawns” which appeared under the opening eyelids
of the morn are not so much beheld with the direct vision as seen
through some ethereal medium of the poet's fancy, under the influ-
ence of a literary and classic enchantment. It should not, however,
be thought that Milton contradicts nature. This indeed has been
charged. His description of the pine as rooted deep as high,” when
that tree does not send its roots deep into the ground, and his use
of the beautiful epithet “star-proof as applied to the elm, which
has not a thick foliage, have been said to indicate an eye inattentive
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JOHN MILTON
10045
to nature. But a poet is not of necessity a naturalist. Poets differ
greatly in their manner of looking at nature. Milton Saw nature
closely enough for his purposes and for our enjoyment. We think
there can be no question that in going to literature for his prepara-
tion, he chose the best education for himself. Had he not done so,
we might have lost the most perfect of English literary artists with-
out gaining a great poet of nature and the world. His chief strength
did not lie in the portraiture of the visible world, whether of nature
or humanity. We have seen his manner of regarding nature; at man
he looked rather with the disposition of the priest than of the dra-
matic or epic poet. He had not the variety and humor, the play of
mind, the pliant and many-sided sympathies, of that English poet in
whose pages nature and the world were already mirrored.
Milton's prose has the greatness of his verse,- the same greatness
both of style and mind. The style often has a splendid way of ad-
vancing; the reader having the same sense of buoyant and powerful
movement which he feels when he commits himself to the full tide
and river of the verse. It is true that the prose has not the exqui-
site care of the verse. The language is frequently difficult. The
sentence sometimes runs down a good part of the page; and if you
would understand it, you must first go through the labor of find-
ing subject and predicate, and correctly distinguishing principal and
subordinate clauses. It does not often happen, however, that this
is necessary; and even when it is necessary, the result is of course
well worth the labor. That cloth of gold,” as Macaulay termed it,
“
is thick with imagery, passion, thought, and splendid phrases. As one
reads, one gets very near to the greatness of the man's intellect and
nature, — to his heroic ardor, — and very near to some qualities which
whether great or not, are surely not to be applauded. We see also
much of him in one character in which he less often appears in
verse, - that of the satirist. There was in Milton the making of a
satirist like Juvenal or Swift; for he had that insight into mind which
is a chief condition of satire. The writer of this paper was once
taken to task for having expressed the opinion that Byron had not
the insight or weight of mind for satire,- that his greatness lay
elsewhere than in the intellect. Now Milton, to my thinking, had
the constitution of mind fitted to write satire. He could see a state
of mind, seize it, and hold it in his strong imagination as in a vise.
It is for this reason that his phrases cut to the bone as they do.
The point of the blade is infinitely fine and sharp, but there is in
the implement immense weight and force. Another characteristic
of Milton's prose is that the thought is frequently more novel than
that of his verse, which tends rather to the expression with unequal
perfection of truths that are universal and important, and for that
reason have been often uttered.
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MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONT ST.
GILES
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10046
JOHN MILTON
From the time of the publication of Paradise Lost' till his death
in 1674, Milton seemed to enjoy, so far as his afflictions and the
public prejudice against him would permit, a kind of Indian summer,
such as sometimes comes at the close of the lives of celebrated men.
The astonishment produced by the work was very great; although
one would think that anything might have been expected from the
author of the earlier poems, of which an edition had been published
in 1645. The accounts we have of the personal appearance, manners,
habits, etc. , of Milton date mostly from this time. We know from
the touching vanity of the allusion to the subject in his (Second
Defense) that his eyes were “externally uninjured”; his answer to
the indecent taunts of his antagonists being :— «They shine with an
unclouded light, like the eyes of one whose vision is perfect. ” That
insults could pass between men of education upon such a subject,
seems to indicate that men's hearts and manners have got gentler
with the spread and advance of that democratic civilization of which
Milton was one of the chief friends and leaders. The accounts of
the time, given by Mr. Masson, describe him as led about the street
near his Bunhill house, a slender man, slightly under middle height,
dressed in a gray cloak and wearing sometimes a small silver-hilted
sword; looking in feeble health, but with his fair complexion and
lightish hair, younger than he was. He was to be seen sitting in his
garden near the door in warm weather, wearing a gray overcoat.
Within doors his dress was neat black. He rose very early, giving
his mornings to study and writing. Music was his chief afternoon
and evening relaxation. « His manner with friends and visitors. ”
says Mr. Masson, was extremely courteous and affable, with just a
shade of stateliness. ” Nevertheless there was a marked tendency in
his talk to be sarcastic and satirical. He had a habit of pronouncing
hard the letter r, the litera canina of the Romans, a characteristic
which Dryden thought "a sure sign of a satirical disposition. ” In
these days his house was frequented by persons of learning and
rank, it is said, “much more than he did desire. ” Up to the time of
his death he was a diligent student and writer. It is scarcely neces-
sary to enumerate the prose writings with which Milton occupied
himself in the years just previous to his death. An incident of the
last year of his life, 1674, was the rearrangement of Paradise Lost'
into twelve books, in the place of the original ten in which it was
first published. He died on November 8th of that year, which was a
Sunday, and was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, by
the side of his father.
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MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONT ST GILES
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MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONY ST.
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JOHN MILTON
10047
ON SHAKESPEARE
W"
THAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in pilèd stones ?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
ON HIS BLINDNESS
WHEN
HEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent 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, light denied ? ”
I fondly ask.
But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, «God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait. ”
TO CYRIACK SKINNER
С
YRIACK, this three-years' day these eyes, - though
clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot, -
Bereft of light their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
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10048
JOHN MILTON
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In Liberty's defense,- my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.
ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT
A
VENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, 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 Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
THE HYMN ON THE NATIVITY
I"
T WAS the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies:
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize;
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She wooes the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
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JOHN MILTON
10049
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw:
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war or battle's sound
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hooked chariot stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
