CHAPTER XIV. MILTON'S BLINDNESS, AND OCCUPATIONS AFTER THE RESTORATION. MILTON's enemies had had the baseness to charge his blindness as a judment upon him he repels this charge with a just indignation, at the opening of his "Second Defence for the People of England." : "I wish," commences this magnificent passage, "that I could with equal facility refute what this barbarous opponent has said of my blindness; but I cannot do it, and I must submit to the affliction. It is not so wretched to be blind, as it is not to be capable of enduring blindness. But why should I not endure a misfortune, which it behoves every one to be prepared to endure if it should happen; which may, in the common course of things, happen to any man, and which has been known to have happened to the most distinguished and virtuous persons in history? What is reported of the Augur Tiresias is well known; of whom Apollonius sung thus in his 'Argonautics'— To men he dared the will divine disclose, Nor fear'd what Jove might in his wrath impose. The gods assign'd him age without decay, But God Himself is truth; in propagating which, as men display a greater integrity and zeal, they approach nearer to the similitude of God, and possess a greater portion of his love. We cannot suppose the Deity envious of truth, or unwilling that it should be freely communicated to mankind: the loss of sight, therefore, which this inspired sage, who was so eager in promoting knowledge among men, sustained, cannot be considered as a judicial punishment: and did not our Saviour himself declare that that poor man whom he had restored to sight had not been born blind, either on account of his own sins, or those of his progenitors? "And with respect to myself, though I have accurately examined my conduct, and scrutinised my soul, I call thee, O God, the searcher of hearts, to witness, that I am not conscious, either in the more early or in the later periods of my life, of having committed any enormity which might deservedly have marked me out as a fit object for such a calamitous visitation: but since my enemies boast that this affliction is only a retribution for the transgressions of my pen, I again invoke the Almighty to witness that I never at any time wrote anything which I did not think agreeable to truth, to justice, and to piety. This was my persuasion then, and I feel the same persuasion now. Thus, therefore, when I was publicly solicited to write a reply to the defence of the royal cause, when I had to contend with the pressure of sickness, and with the apprehension of soon losing the sight of my remaining eye, and when my medical attendants clearly announced, that if I did engage in this work it would be irreparably lost, their premonitions caused no hesitation and inspired no dismay; I would not have listened to the voice even of Esculapius himself from the shrine of Epidaurus, in preference to the suggestions of the heavenly monitor within my breast my resolution was unshaken, though the alternative was either the loss of my sight or the desertion of my duty; and I called to mind those two destinies which the oracle of Delphi announced to the son of Thetis. "I considered that many had purchased a less good by a greater evil, the meed of glory by the loss of life; but that I might procure great good by little suffering; that, though I am blind, I might still discharge the most honourable duties, the performance of which, as it is something more durable than glory, ought to be an object of superior admiration and esteem; I resolved, therefore, to make the short interval of sight which was left me to enjoy as beneficial as possible to the public interest. "But, if the choice were necessary, I would, sir, prefer my blindness to yours; yours is a cloud spread over the mind, which darkens both the light of reason and of conscience; mine keeps from my view only the coloured surfaces of things, while it leaves me at liberty to contemplate the beauty and stability of virtue and of truth. How many things are there besides which I would not willingly see; how many which I must see against my will; and how few which I feel any anxiety to see! There is, as the Apostle has remarked, a way to strength through weakness. Let me then be the most feeble creature alive, as long as that feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational and immortal spirit; as long as in that obscurity in which I am enveloped, the light of the divine presence more clearly shines! And, indeed, in my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity; who regards me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to behold nothing but Himself. Alas! for him who insults me, who maligns and merits public execration! For the Divine law not only shields me from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to attack; not indeed so much from the privation of my sight, as from the overshadowing of those heavenly wings, which seem to have occasioned this obscurity. To this I ascribe the more tender assiduities of my friends, their soothing attentions, their kind visits, their reverential observances." Every one is familiar with the poet's twenty-second sonnet on this subject. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In liberty's defence, my noble task. One is a little surprised that he could so long endure this laborious and tedious office of secretary, especially after his sight began to fail him. His nephew, Edward Philips, for some time assisted him. In 1652 he entirely lost his sight. Todd has recovered a curious letter of Milton from the State-Paper Office, recommending his friend Andrew Marvell, the poet, for some employment:-"A gentleman, whose name is Mr. Marvell,-a man, both by report and the converse I have had with him, of singular desert for the state to make use of; who also offers himself, if there be any employment for him. His father was the minister of Hull, and he hath spent four years abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain, to very good purpose, as I believe, and the gaining of these four languages;-besides he is a scholar, and well read in the Latin and Greek authors; and no doubt, of an approved conversation; for he comes now lately out of the house of the Lord Fairfax, who was general, where he was entrusted to give some instructions in the languages to the lady, his daughter." This letter of Milton was written in 1653: but Marvell was not joined to Milton in the office of Latin secretary, till 1657. Marvell's commendatory poem on the "Paradise Lost," is well known: When I beheld the poet blind, yet bold, In slender book his vast design unfold; &c. Milton's salary as Latin secretary was £288 18s. 6d. a year. In 1659, he was only paid at the rate of £200 a year, having then retired. In this retirement, about two years before the Restoration, he began the "Paradise Lost." Though retired, he was visited by all foreigners of distinction, and some persons of rank at home; but he was known and admired more for his political services than for his poetry. He had, as has been mentioned, done little in poetry for the last twenty years, except his few sonnets: of these, Johnson speaks with a tasteless and unworthy contempt: that they are rich in thought, sentiment, and naked sublimity of language, is now undisputed. It appears that Milton yet relaxed nothing of his mental activity. After the death of Cromwell he must have seen the incumbent danger of that republican form of government, which he had spent so much zeal and such gigantic talents to establish. Not only his head but his heart was involved in this establishment. He had worked himself to a fury against kings, and what he supposed to be the tyranny inseparable from their power. His ambition does not appear to have been in the least degree selfish; he had no views of personal aggrandisement: he did not look to riches or political honours: he had no familiarity with those who were called the great even with Cromwell, his idol, he seems to have had no individual intimacy. Lawrence, "of virtuous father virtuous son," and Cyriac Skinner, were his chief friends. the former he says,— Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire From the hard season gaining ?—— Of He, who of those delights can judge, and spare, To interpose them oft, is not unwise. Even the genius of Milton could not have made the progress he did either in production or in learning, if he had admitted the frequent distractions of society. The history of his day is given by the biographers;-but it will not account for the immensity of his reading. The processes of such a mind it is too hazardous to attempt to analyse. His vast memory tempted him sometimes to encumber himself with abstruse and useless literature. One is a little astonished that a creative brain, which is constantly working its materials into new shapes, and combinations, can reflect things precisely in the form and colours in which it receives them.-Even the "Paradise Lost" is occasionally patched with allusions of this kind. There is, however, an unaccountable charm in the manner in which the poet occasionally mentions remote names of persons and places. A single word calls up a whole train of ideas :but then this is a mere reference to an instructed and rich memory. Milton's whole life ought to have been employed in creation, not reproduction. But this opinion will not perhaps be commonly assented to, or even understood. The poet was a powerful reasoner in his political and theological discussions, but not always free from obscurity or sophistry His heated mind saw certain questions in an exaggerated or partial view. The time was now arriving, when it was necessary to throw away and forget politics. In spite of all his efforts, the monarchy was at length restored. He had now reason to dread the fate of the other regicides: it was necessary for a time to conceal himself: Vane and others were taken, condemned, and put to death. The part which Milton had taken in justifying the decapitation of the late king, by arguments and in language insulting and contemptuous, might reasonably have been expected to have marked him out to the Court for a signal object of vengeance. He was finally spared: by what influences this was effected, is now little known this act of mercy reflects great honour on the government. Though there are many reasons to suppose that Milton's poetical fame was yet but little acknowledged, this extraordinary regard shown to him by sparing his life raises a contrary inference.-He had no claims for forbearance from the King on account of his political talents:—these were powers which it must have been desirable to crush. The greater part of those who had the monarch's ear were profligate men, who, even if they had been well acquainted with the poetry which the bard had hitherto put forth, would not have enjoyed it: even Lord Clarendon seems to have had no taste for this sort of genius: he commends Cowley as having taken a flight beyond other votaries of the Muses; and the historian's warm loyalism, in theory as well as personal attachment, would have felt abhorrence beyond other men for the immortal bard's political writings. We are constrained to leave the cause of this mercy in the dark, and give the glory to those who exerted it. Now came in a flood of poetasters from the French school; dissolute, baseminded, and demoralising, with little genius, but some wit,-epigrammatists, satirists, and buffoons, ridiculing all that was grave, praising nothing but what was worldly and unprincipled. It is true that Dryden was now beginning to work himself into fame, but on the French model; which, however, he improved by the force of thought and language, and harmony of vigorous versification. I need not observe how unlike was the genius of Milton and of Dryden: Johnson has admirably analysed the latter, to which his own taste inclined. He who is partial to Dryden will never, I think, much relish Milton; though it will be objected that the case was otherwise with Gray, who is said to have united his admiration of both. There is a want of grandeur, of sentiment, of creation, of visionariness in Dryden. His style is clear, powerful, and buoyant; but his thoughts are often common, and his imagery is unpicturesque and vague: he was more intellectual than imaginative: his mind was turned to the world, and the observances of actual and daily life: he was often happy in acuteness of discrimination upon the manners and characters of the time: witness his portrait of Achitophel (Lord Shaftesbury). Here the extreme subtlety of his understanding displayed itself in full force. This was exactly what suited the reigning taste at this epoch. Let us contemplate Milton while such things were the rage. He had now withdrawn himself from the angry and harsh contests in which he had been so many years engaged, and was contemplating battles a thousand-fold more exalted, of rebel angels with almighty power. Never, in his more worldly employments, seeing things but in their grandest phases, with what calm scorn must he now have looked down upon the petty witticisms of what the Court and nation now considered the brilliant emanations of poetic genius! Davenant was his friend, and Milton may have found some fine things in Gondibert; but there are no traces that the two poets had at this period any familiarity or intercourse. I do not recollect that Milton and Cowley were acquainted; nor do Milton's early poems seem to have come under Cowley's notice: if they had, he would assuredly have quoted them in his "Prose Essays." The conduct of those who were now re-admitted to power was too well calculated to confirm the poet's hatred of monarchy: but in silent solitude and darkness he worked complacently on. Conscious of his own superiority of genius, he did not regard the loud applauses of the mob in favour of others. He did not wonder that the dissolute in life should have no taste for the pure spiritualities of true poetry : he relied upon the rewards of posterity with a just and sure faith. While others were groping upon earth in sensual pleasures, he lived by his imagination in heaven: his outward blindness did but strengthen his inward light. Perhaps but for this blindness his creative faculties had not been sufficiently concentrated to produce his great poem. Something of this opinion he seems himself to have entertained; thus drawing comfort from his misfortune. He was now shut out from worldly distractions; and the day was as the covering calm of night to him. The humility of his fortune, the singularity of his habits, all aided contemplation. The Muse can never live, except feebly and languidly, amid material luxuries: she delights in the majesty of thought, the scorn of all sublunary pleasures. The poet, in his long intercourse with the busy world, had, like others, shown the human passions of anger, bitterness, contempt, and invective; he now threw them all off: they nowhere appear in the sublime poetry he now produced, unless perhaps by slight allusion in a few passages of "Samson Agonistes," where the memory of the past revives a few stings. In 1665 Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of Sir Edward Minshull, knight, of an ancient Cheshire family. She survived him above fifty years, and retiring to Nantwich in Cheshire, died there in 1727. Ellwood, the quaker, now undertook to read to him, for the sake of the advantage of his conversation and instruction. When the plague raged in London, 1665, Ellwood received Milton and his family into his house at Chalfont St. Giles, in Buckinghamshire. Here Ellwood says it was that the poet communicated to him the manuscript of "Paradise Lost." Bishop Newton remarks, that considering the difficulties "under which the author lay, his uneasiness at the public affairs and his own, his age and infirmities, his not being now in circumstances to maintain an amanuensis, but obliged to make use of any hand that came next to write his verses as he made them, it is really wonderful that he should have the spirit to undertake such a work, and much more that he should ever bring it to perfection." At this time he addressed a beautiful Latin letter to his friend Peter Heimbach, a German, of which the following is Hayley's translation: "If, among so many funerals of my countrymen, in a year so full of pestilence and sorrow, you were induced, as you say, by rumour to believe that I also was snatched away, it is not surprising; and if such a rumour prevailed among those of your nation as it seems to have done, because they were solicitous for my health, it is not unpleasing; for I must esteem it as a proof of their benevolence towards me. But by the graciousness of God, who had prepared for me a safe retreat in the country, I am still alive and well; and, I trust, not utterly an unprofitable servant, whatever duty in life there yet remains for me to fulfil. That you remember me after so long an interval in our correspondence, gratifies me exceedingly: though, by the politeness of your expression, you seem to afford me room to suspect that you have rather forgotten me, since, as you say, you admire in me so many different virtues wedded together. From so many weddings I should assuredly dread a family * In fact, when they appeared in 1645, he was in the King's service, and personally attended His Majesty; and he died in 1667, before the second edition of the poems, and the very year in which the "Paradise Lost" was published. + See Ellwood's "Autobiography," and see T. Warton's character of this book in Todd, i. 187. too numerous, were it not certain that in narrow circumstances, and under severity of fortune, virtues are most excellently reared and most flourishing. Yet one of these said virtues has not very handsomely rewarded me for entertaining her; for that which you call my political virtue, and which I should rather wish you to call my devotion to my country (enchanting me with her captivating name), almost, if I may say so, expatriated me. Other virtues, however, join their voices to assure me that wherever we prosper in rectitude, there is our country. In ending my letter, let me obtain from you this favour; that if you find any parts of it incorrectly written, and without stops, you will impute it to the boy who writes for me, who is utterly ignorant of Latin, and to whom I am forced (wretchedly enough) to repeat every single letter that I dictate. I still rejoice that your merit as an accomplished man, whom I knew as a youth of the highest expectation, has advanced you so far in the honourable favour of your prince. For your prosperity in every other point you have both my wishes and my hopes. Farewell. "London, August 26, 1666." CHAPER XV. MILTON'S CONTEMPORARIES— "PARADISE REGAINED" AND 66 SAMSON AGONISTES." ON 27th April, 1667, Milton sold his "Paradise Lost" to Samuel Simmons for an immediate payment of five pounds; another five pounds to be paid on the sale of thirteen hundred copies of the first edition; a third five pounds on the sale of the same number of the second edition; and the same sum after an equal sale of the third edition; each edition not to exceed fifteen hundred copies. In two years the poet recovered the second payment: he did not live to receive the other payments: therefore 2800 copies had not been sold in seven years. Johnson and others contend that the sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in these times, was a proof that the poet's merit was not unfelt. I do not think so. John Dennis observes in a passage of his "Familiar Letters," quoted by Mitford, that "never any poet left a greater reputation behind him than Mr. Cowley, while Milton remained obscure and known but to few; but the great reputation of Cowley did not continue half a century, and Milton's is now on the pinnacle of the Temple of Fame." Mitford enumerates the following poets as contemporary with Milton :— -"Waller, Suckling, Crashaw, Denham, Lovelace, Brome, Sherborne, Fanshaw, Davenant, besides others of inferior note." He might have added-Habington, Stanley, Carew, Herbert, Withers. But none of these were of any mark, or power of invention, unless Cowley and Davenant. It does continue to appear to me extraordinary, that so many false and petty beauties should start up successively to be the temporary fashion of poetry. Invention is not improbability: it is to embody and bring before others the spirits of the past and the absent; it is not the trick of flowery or sparkling language: but the busy-bodies of a nation,-they who give the tone in society, having no natural taste or feeling,-require artificial stimulants. The court of Charles II. was too much adulterated to endure the spiritual grandeur of Milton: he would have dispelled all the delusions of the wicked magician of voluptuousness: his sternness, his haughty wisdom, his unbending dogmas, were to them terrible and revolting. At the same time, though the exalted bard was little noticed by the "fashionable world," or by popular authors, we cannot suppose that he found no readers. That class of learned men, who were now thrown into the shade,-the republican party,— must have remembered and admired Milton's zeal in their cause, and have had the curiosity to read his poem; but perhaps in silence and obscurity. Dryden, too, though of so different a genius and taste, as well as politics, was fully sensible of the poet's merit. In the preface to his "State of Innocence," soon after Milton's death, he says, "I cannot, without injury to the deceased author of 'Paradise Lost,' but acknowledge that this poem has received its entire foundation, part of the design, and many of the ornaments from him. What I have borrowed will be so easily discerned from my mean productions, that I shall not need to point the reader to the places; and truly I should be sorry, for my own sake, that any one should take the pains to compare them together; the original being undoubtedly one |