JOHN MILTON. 107 might show him the kindness of God? Did we not see him honouring the lame Mephibosheth with a princely seat at his own table? Did we not see him revenging the blood of his rival Ishbosheth upon the heads of Rechab and Baanah? What could any living man have done more to wipe off these bloody aspersions? Yet is not a Shimei ashamed to charge an innocent David with all the blood of the house of Saul! How, is it likely this clamorous wretch had secretly traduced the name of David all the time of his government, that dares thus accuse him to his face before all the mighty men of Israel, who were witnesses of the contrary ? The greater the person is, the more open do his actions lie to misinterpretation and censure. Every tongue speaks partially, according to the interest he hath in the cause or the patient. It is not possible that eminent persons should be free from imputations; innocence can no more protect them than power. VII. JOHN MILTON. Milton was born in London in 1608, and received his early education at St Paul's School in that city, from which he afterwards removed to Christ's College, Cambridge. After the usual course of study, he retired to his father's country seat at Horton, in Bucks, where he wrote his " Comus," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and "Lycidas." He then set out for a short tour on the Continent, and on his return settled in London; and in the quarrel which ensued between the King and the Commons, he espoused the side of the latter with all the vehemence of an enthusiastic mind inspired with love of republican antiquity. As a thorough republican, he justified all the proceedings of the most violent party of the Commons; even the execution of the King was defended by him in his "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," and his "Defence of the People of England." For these and other similar productions he received from the Commons a large sum of money, and was appointed Latin Secretary to Cromwell. On the Restoration he was exposed to some danger from his previous conduct; but Davenant procured a pardon for him, and he spent the rest of his life in peace and obscurity, beguiling the abundant leisure of a blind old age with literary pursuits. In 1667 his 66 Paradise Lost " was first printed; in 1670 appeared his "History of Britain," and in the next year "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes;" he also prepared for the press his largest prose work, "A Treatise on Christian Doctrine;" but it was not printed during his life. He died 1674, and was buried in the Church of St Giles, Cripplegate. Nothing in the history of English literature is more calculated to excite feelings of regret and melancholy than the career of Milton. Abandoning himself, at his entrance into life, to the uncontrolled impulse of youthful feelings; indulging in Utopian visions of univer sal happiness, freedom, and virtue, not realizable in this world; ally 66 The ing himself, in order to overthrow one species of tyranny, with men who, he found out when too late, only intended to set up another, he lived to see the utter frustration of all his hopes, and died crushed and broken in spirit, ridiculed by the one party and disliked by the other, and almost isolated from mankind by peculiar opinions with which no one sympathized. Even his immortal poems, "Paradise Lost and Regained," give unpleasant evidence of a mind imbittered by disappointed hopes, and contrast unfavourably with the buoyant joyousness of his youthful poetry. His prose works have been only rescued from oblivion by his poetical reputation,-the only one which merits immortality on the ground of its own excellences being the noble " Areopagitica," or Defence of Unlicensed Printing." style of his prose works is excessively declamatory and rhetorical, and is, besides, so thoroughly moulded in its structure on the Latin form, that it can only perplex an ordinary English reader. His language is at all times violent and overcharged; his learning is often offensively paraded, and the impetuosity of his invective constantly led him astray from his subject, caused him to apply to such men as Bishop Hall terms which would not be too weak for Judas Iscariot, and exposed him to the attacks of more prudent antagonists. Notwithstanding these defects, however, when the dignity of his subject admits of a poetical treatment, Milton's mind rises to the occasion, and his language is wonderfully fine,—its foreign, un-English structure even contributing to give it additional dignity. None of his prose works are now read, except his " Areopagitica" and his "Tractate on Education;" and perhaps Milton's reputation would not have suffered had time spared us these only. 66 1. The value of a book.-I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as man, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors, for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself; kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and 1 According to the fable, Cadmus, having killed the dragon that watched the fountain at Thebes, sowed its teeth, which immediately sprung up armed men, who fought with and killed each other. revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life. 2. Difficulty of enforcing a licensing system.-How shall the licensers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they assume to themselves, above all others in the land, the grace of infallibility and uncorruptedness? And again, if it be true that a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool with the best book, yea, or without book, there is no reason that we should deprive a wise man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a fool that which, being restrained, will be no hindrance to his folly. For, if there should be so much exactness always used to keep that from him which is unfit for his reading, we should, in the judgment of Aristotle not only, but of Solomon, and of our Saviour, not vouchsafe him good precepts, and, by consequence, not willingly admit him to good books, as being certain that a wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet than a fool will do of sacred Scripture. It is next alleged we must not expose ourselves to temptations without necessity; and, next to that, not employ our time in vain things. To both these objections one answer will serve, that to all men such books are not temptations nor vanities, but useful drugs and materials wherewith to temper and compose effective and strong medicines, which man's life cannot want. The rest, as children and childish men, who have not the art to qualify and pre-. pare these working minerals, well may be exhorted to forbear; but hindered forcibly they cannot be, by all the licensing that sainted inquisition could ever yet contrive. There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible loss and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to, more than if some enemy at sea should stop up all our havens, and ports, and creeks; it hinders and retards the importation of our richest merchandise-truth; nay, it was first established and put in practice by anti-Christian malice and mystery, on set purpose to extinguish, if it were possible, the light of reformation, and to settle falsehood; little differing from that policy wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran by the prohibiting of printing. It is not denied, but gladly confessed, we are to send our thanks and vows to heaven louder than most of nations, for that great measure of truth which we enjoy, especially in those main points between us and the pope, with his appurtenances the prelates; but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us till we come to beatific vision, that man, by this very opinion, declares that he is yet far short of truth. Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when He ascended, and His apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon,' with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up, limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint. As this licensing is a particular disesteem of every knowing person alive, and most injurious to the written labours and monuments of the dead, so to me it seems an undervaluing and vilifying of the whole nation. I cannot set so light by all the invention, the art, the wit, the grave and solid judgment which is in England, as that it can be comprehended in any twenty2 capacities, how good soever, much less that it should not pass except their superintendence be over it, except it be sifted and strained with their strainers, that it should be uncurrent without their manual stamp. Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets, and statutes, and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our wool-packs. What is it but a servitude, like that imposed by the Philistines, not to be allowed the sharpening of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licensing forges. 3. Evil effects of licensing in suppressing inquiry.-Behold, now, this vast city,3 a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with God's protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there sitting by their studious lamps, 1 Typhon, according to the fable, slew his brother Osiris, King of Egypt, and cut his body into many pieces, which he divided among his fellow-conspirators. Isis, the wife of Osiris, and Orus, their son, defeated the conspirators; and after a long and laborious search, Isis recovered her husband's mangled remains, and in his honour made as many statues of wax as she had found pieces of his body, and consigned them to the care of the priests. 2 This was the number of the licensers. 3 i.e., London. musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation; others, as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. This is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, by casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and, in their envious gabble, would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms. What should ye do, then? Should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up, and yet springing daily, in this city? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers 2 over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing, do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, and free, and humane government; it is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us; liberty, which is the nurse of all great wits,this is that which hath rarified and enlightened our spirits, like the influence of heaven; this is that which hath enfranchised, enlarged, and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves. Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders, of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, and slavish, as ye found us; but you, then, must first become that which you cannot be, oppressive, 1 Mewing, i.e., moulting, casting off old and damaged feathers that their place may be supplied with new and uninjured ones. This operation is analogous to the conduct of the people at the time in rejecting old opinions and abolishing old institutions, and replacing them by others; hence Milton's use of the term. i. e., monopolizers. |