L this was his own case; he escaped with life, but lived in poverty; and though he was aiways very sober and temperate, yet he was much afflicted with the gout, and other "painful diseases in crude old age,"-when he was not yet a very old man. "But," Newton adds, "Milton was the most heated enthusiast of his time: speaking of Charles the First's murder, in his 'Defence of the People of England,' he says, 'Quanquam ego hæc divino potius instinctu gesta esse crediderim, quoties memori⦠repeto,'" &c. The poet goes on : Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn "These concluding verses," says Hayley, "of this beautiful chorus appear to me particularly affecting, from the persuasion that Milton, in composing them, addressed the last two immediately to Heaven, as a prayer for himself. If the conjecture of this application be just, we may add, that never was the prevalence of a righteous prayer more happily conspicuous; and let me here remark, that however various the opinions of men may be concerning the merits or demerits of Milton's political character, the integrity of his heart appears to have secured to him the favour of Providence; since it pleased the Giver of all good not only to turn his labour to a peaceful end, but to irradiate his declining life with the most abundant portion of those pure and sublime mental powers, for which he had constantly and fervently prayed, as the choicest bounty of Heaven." Again, Hayley thinks that at 1. 759 Milton alludes to his own connubial infelicity, and regret for his forgiveness at the repentance of his first wife, suspicious of its sincerity. But it is not only to the unhappiness of his marriage that Milton alludes in this stern poem: he also renews his political prejudices at 1. 1418. Lords are lordliest in their wine, And the well feasted priest then soonest fired Warton observes that he here expresses his contempt of a nobility and an opulent clergy, that is, lords both spiritual and temporal, who by no means coincided with his levelling and narrow principles of republicanism and Calvinism, and whom he tacitly compares with the lords and priests of the idol Dagon. There can be no doubt that the whole of this poem arose out of the state of Milton's personal feelings at the Restoration. It is the blaze of a mind as gigantic as Samson's form and strength. His imagination is everywhere on fire both with intellectual and material visions. A vulgar taste in poetry would call the nakedness of his language prosaic: but in the enthusiasm of forceful thought the petty ornaments of language are disregarded. It is in the exaltation of the soul, in belief in visionary presence, that high poetry consists. We are bound to contemplate the bard in these lofty moods;-to think how his spirit rose above his unprosperous and painful situation;-and with what sublime images, sentiments, and reflections, he soothed himself!-How he glowed when he imagined Samson pulling down destruction on the hands of his foes!-His vigorous and enthusiastic mind roused him to be thus ready to devote himself to the common ruin. Though now retired, neglected, and subject to many stings of disappointment, I doubt not he was altogether happier than when his mere memory, observation, and judgment were occupied in the coarse conflict of practical affairs. Imagination is more gratifying than memory, and idealism than reality. It is difficult to conceive how so creative a mind could so long bend itself to the servile office of secretaryship: to find correctness of expression in a dead language for diplomatic communications was but a pedantic employment; and a waste of powers which ought only to have been applied to the highest intellectual exertions. It is clear, however, that by whatever arguments the poet might reconcile himself to his blindness, there were moments when he felt most bitterly the deprivation: the passages I have cited from "Samson Agonistes" prove this. In his poverty he could not employ a skilful and learned amanuensis, who could take down his expressions with facility: the aid and consolation of books, except at the mercy of others, were shut to him. He grieved for the loss of that outward view of the face of nature in which he had delighted: he could no longer roam alone at his own will amid the woods and forests and green fields: he sat of a sunny morning in his house-porch, enjoying the fresh air; but this was in a suburb of the great city, in a confined garden: the freedom of limb, the exhilaration of boundary exercise, the breasting of the blowing wind, the change of the fresh breeze, which varies with each contending step, were not his! O, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon! All was blank, and every footstep was feeble and tottering, and at the mercy of another. We perceive that after a life of such high virtue as he was conscious that he had led, there were bitter hours when he thought this fate hard. As his endowments were sublime, so were his expectations lofty: his temper was naturally scornful; and as he could himself do mighty things, so perhaps he demanded more of others than they could well perform. He had not descended to a minute observance of all the flexibilities, ductilities, and windings of the human character: he did not forgive or consider its littleness, its petty passions, and mean and ignorant thoughts. It seems to me to be a biographer's duty thus to analyze the character of a great man, if it be done with a conscientious desire of explaining the truth. Mere facts, uncommented on, are neither interesting nor instructive: better omit the comment than do it frivolously or affectedly; still less, maliciously. I myself have no doubt that the poet was wrong in his political opinions; but I have still less doubt that he was strictly conscientious in them. To call in question the sincerity of his protestations and aspirations, his magnificent effusions of holy hope and enthusiasm,-would be not only stupid, but wicked. CHAPTER XVI. MILTON'S DEATH. THERE are certain minor points which it is very useful to ascertain, but which, when once established, do not require to be repeated; such are many of the particulars verified with the most exemplary labour by Todd. If anything were wanting, Mitford has gone over the ground again with acute and discriminate taste and judgment: a poet himself, of deep feeling, and eloquent originality. I will however just mention, that the poet did not entirely abandon literary production after having published the two magnificent poems last noticed. In 1672 he put forth his "Artis Logica Plenior Institutio;" and in 1673 his "Treatise of True Religion, Heresy," &c. In the year of his death he published his "Familiar Letters in Latin," with some "Academical Exercises." In the preceding year he reprinted his "Juvenile Poems," with additions, among which is the "Tractate on Education," published in 1644. His health now gave way fast, and his fits of the gout became violent; but such was the firmness of his mind, that Aubrey says, even in the paroxysms of this fell disease, "he would be very cheerful, and sing." He died quietly at his house in Bunhill-fields, on Sunday, November 8th, 1674; wanting only a month of completing his sixtysixth year. Thus departed the greatest epic poet of England,-and, in my opinion, of any country or age. He was buried near his father, in the chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate. His person was beautiful in youth, but his face too delicate: he was of middle height, active, and a good swordsman; temperate in his food, and all his habits of life, except in study, in which he indulged to excess even from his childhood. His evenings were usually passed in music and conversation: his chief time of composition appears to have been the night; and by the aid of a most retentive memory, he dictated in the morning to an amanuensis what he had thus composed. His biographers say that he was of an equal and placid temper: but this is not the character given by Mrs. Powell, the mother of his first wife; who, however, was an angry and prejudiced witness. Todd has printed a full account of his nuncupative will, which was first discovered by T. Warton, and which, being contested, furnishes several curious particulars of his domestic habits. He had an humble establishment, consisting of two maid-servants and a man-servant: he dined usually in his kitchen.* He never was a man of worldly ostentation, and always despised money: he seems to have been stern to his daughters, and exacted too much from them; they accordingly did not steadily love him. It must have been an irksome task to them to read to him in languages which they did not understand. As to the poet's religious tenets, a treatise has been lately recovered from the StatePaper Office, which has made a great noise among the theologists; the title is, "De Doctrina Christiana, ex Sacris duntaxat Libris petita, Disquisitionum Libri duo posthumi." King George IV. put it into the hands of Dr. Sumner (afterwards Bishop of Winchester), to be edited and translated. It is said that the poet, being dissatisfied with the Bodies of Divinity then published, was thus induced to compile one for himself. This treatise is considered to prove that Milton was finally an Arian. It is calmly and moderately written; not with the animosity of a controversialist, but it wants the author's former or usual recondite learning and argumentative force. Bishop Burgess, considering that this work disproves the poet's orthodoxy, has disputed its genuineness;† but it is generally admitted that its authenticity cannot be doubted. This extraordinary treatise contains many singular opinions, which none but theologists will take the trouble to discuss.? Milton left three daughters :-Anne, who was deformed, and died in childbed; Mary, who died single; and Deborah, who married Abraham Clarke, a weaver in Spitalfields, and died, aged seventy-six, in August, 1727. Her daughter married Thomas Foster, also a weaver in Spitalfields, and died at Islington, May 9th, 1754, in her sixty-sixth year. Sir Christopher Milton, the poet's only brother, was knighted and made a judge by James II., but soon retired from the bench. He retired to Ipswich, and afterwards to the village of Rushmere, about two miles distant, where he died; and was buried in the church of St. Nicholas, Ipswich, March 22d, 1692. He left children.¶ Milton had also two nephews by his sister Philips,-John Philips and Edward Philips, both authors.** CHAPTER XVII. GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. I NOW come to general observations on the poet's character and genius: of these I have already intermixed some in the course of the narrative: if I recur to any of the same opinions and reflections, although in other words, I must crave the reader's indulgence. Of this "greatest of great men," the private traits and whole life were congenial to his poetry. Men of narrow feelings will say that his political writings contradict this congeniality. His politics were, no doubt, violent and fierce; but it cannot be doubted that they were conscientious. He lived at a crisis of extraordinary public agitation, when all the principles of government were moved to their very foundations, and when there was a general desire to commence institutions de novo. In his early poems there are occasional passages which show his taste for monarchi *This was long afterwards, in Geneva, the custom of the highest and most opulent Genevan families. See Picot, "Histoire de Genève." † 8vo. 1826. See discussions on Milton's tenets here let out, in "Edinburgh Review," No. cvII., September, 1831; and see Mitford's note, "Life," p. cx. See the American (Dr. Channing's) "Remarks on the Character and Writings of Milton." Sir James Mackintosh found the last descendant of Milton, parish-clerk at Madras. See pedigrees of Knights made by Charles II. and James II., collected by De Neve, inter Mss. Brit. Mus. **See their "Lives" by Godwin. See also Theatrum Poetarum," Canterbury, 1800; and again Geneva, 1824. cal and aristocratic manners; for the pomp of the state and the church; for the glories of chivalry and the feudal system; for the halls of "knights and barons bold;" for tho music and the solemn gloom of magnificent cathedrals: the high embowed roof, There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced quire below, In service high and anthems clear, &c.-Il Penseroso. Milton's imagination was not at all suited to the cold and dry hypocrisy of a Puritan; but his gigantic mind gave him a temper that spurned at all authority. This was his characteristic through life: it showed itself in every thought and every action, both public and private, from his earliest youth; except that he did not appear to rebel against parental authority; for nothing is more beautiful than his mild and tender expostulation to his father, in that exquisite Latin address which has been quoted. His great poems require such a stretch of mind in the reader, as to be almost painful. The most amazing copiousness of learning is sublimated into all his conceptions and descriptions. His learning never oppressed his imagination; and his imagination never obliterated or dimmed his learning: but even these would not have done, without the addition of a great heart and a pure and lofty mind. That mind was given up to study and meditation from his boyhood till his death; he had no taste for the vulgar pleasures of life; he was all spiritual. But he loved fame enthusiastically, and was ready to engage in the great affairs of public business: and when he did engage, performed his part with industry, skill, and courage. Courage, indeed, mingled in a prominent degree, among his many other mighty and splendid qualities. Who is equal to analyze a mind so rich, so powerful, so exquisite? I do not think that tenderness was his characteristic; and he was, above all other men, unyielding. His softer sensibilities were rather reflective than instantaneous; his sentiments came from his imagination, rather than his imagination from his sentiments. The vast fruits of his mind always resulted from complex ingredients; though they were so amalgamated, that with him they became simple in their effects. It is impossible now to trace the processes of his intellect. We cannot tell what he would have been without study; but we know that he must have been great under any circumstances, though his greatness might have been of a different kind. He made whatever he gathered from others his own; he only used it as an ingredient for his own combinations. His earliest study seems to have been the holy writings; they first fed his fancy with the imagery of Eastern poetry; and nowhere could he have found so sublime a nutri ment. But what is any nutriment to him who cannot taste, digest, and be nourished? It depends not upon the force and excellence of what is conveyed; but upon the power of the recipient: it is, almost all, inborn genius, though it may be under the influence of some small modification from discipline. However great and wonderful Milton was, there were some points in which both Spenser and Shakspeare exceeded him; because in those points nature had been more favourable to them. Probably both Spenser and Shakspeare were more ductile to the world. Milton was stern, solitary, unbending, contemptuous, proud, yet unostentatious. With his disposition and taste, he was little observant of the minor manners and characters of society: he was always thoughtful, inflexible, and abstracted. Loftiness of musing was the sphere in which he lived: his books were his companions; his imagination surrounded him with another and a spiritual world. Providence has endowed us with the power to conceive what is more magnificent and more beautiful than that which the material world exhibits. We know not why-it is among the mysteries of the Almighty. If he who nurses these spiritualities is at the same time a materialist in action, ther we may doubt the good of them: but assuredly Milton was not guilty of this inconsistency. Read all his earnest and eloquent professions of innocence; and who can hesitate to give credit to them? His controversial opponents have attempted to throw dirt upon him, but have not succeeded. He provoked the most bitter hostility; yet no immorality could be fastened upon him. Allowing the poet to have been harsh and choleric, yet the sanctity of his disposition and character appears to me demonstrative. I can reconcile this with his severe politics, though those seem, certainly, not very merciful. Superficial minds, affecting the tone of wisdom, hold out that the gifts of the Muse are incompatible with serious business. Milton, the greatest of poets, affords a crushing answer to this. In the flower of his manhood, and through middle age, he was a statist, and active man of executive affairs in a crisis of unexampled difficulty and danger. His controversial writings, both in politics and divinity, are solid, vigorous, original, and practical; and yet he could return at last to the highest flights of the Muse, undamped and undimmed. The lesson of his life is one of the most instructive that biography affords: it shows what various and dissimilar powers may be united in the same person, and what a grandeur of moral principles may actuate the human heart; but at the same time it shows how little all these combined talents and virtues can secure the due respect and regard of contemporaries. It is absurd to deny that Milton was neglected during his life, and that his unworldly-mindedness let the meanest of the people mount over his head. He lived poor, and for the most part in obscurity. Even high employments in the state seem to have obtained him no luxuries, and few friends or acquaintance: no brother poets flocked round him; none praised him, though in the habit of flattering each other. The poet, indeed, might have been employed more consistently with his sublime genius, than in political and theological controversy. He lost nineteen precious years of his middle life in those irritating occupations, from the age of thirty-two to fifty-one: after that age he occupied the remaining fourteen years of his life principally in poetry. His controversies had not sullied his imagination, nor affected the sanctity of his thoughts, language, or temper :-I mean, after these degrading labours ceased; for, while busy in them, they must have necessarily embittered his feelings and lowered his mind. It is melancholy to think how much of grand invention, which he might in those long years have put forth, has been lost to the world. I do not say that the writings which during that period he did put forth have been entirely useless; but they were beneath Milton's best powers, and might probably have been executed by inferior talents. I here suppose them excellent in their department and unmixed with mischief; but this is more than can be conceded positively to them. The notions of republicanism are assuredly carried too far; and nothing can be more dangerous than to resist all authority, and call in question all ancient institutions. If intellect is the grand glory of man, Milton stands pre-eminent above all other human beings; above Homer, Virgil, Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Spenser, and Shakspeare! To the highest grandeur of invention upon the sublimest subject he unites the greatest wisdom and learning, and the most perfect art. Almost all other poets sink into twinkling stars before him. What has issued from the French school of poetry seems to be the production of an inferior order of beings, and in this I include even our Dryden and Pope; for I cannot place these two famous men among the greatest poets: they may be among the first of a secondary class. It is easy to select fine passages from minor poetical authors; but a great poet must be tried by his entirety,-by the uniform texture of his web. Milton has a language of his own; I may say, invented by himself. It is somewhat hard, but it is all sinew: it is not vernacular, but has a latinized cast, which requires a little time to reconcile a reader to it. It is best fitted to convey his own magnificent ideas: its very learnedness impresses us with respect: it moves with a gigantic step: it does not flow, like Shakspeare's style; nor dance, like Spenser's. Now and then there are transpositions somewhat alien to the character of the English language, which is not well calculated for transposition; but in Milton this is perhaps a merit, because his lines are pregnant with deep thought and sublime imagery, which require us to dwell upon them, and contemplate them over and over. He ought never to be read rapidly, his is a style which no one ought to imitate till he is endowed with a soul |